President Saakashvili has said the negotiations regarding the release of 15 Georgian sailors captured by pirates in Somali in 2010, where conducted confidentially due to the safety of the sailors.
During the visit to Mtskheta, Mikheil Saakashvili spoke about the long-term process of negotiations, which ended successfully and the fifteen Georgian sailors were released from the pirates` captivity after 508 day.
`There was not a single day when I did not think about this. We were much worried because we were in deadlock several times. Almost 600 people, including the citizens of the EU member states are still in pirates` captivity in Somali and our friends told us to give up the process asserting chances were very low. We did not give up for a second anyway. The orders were issued on negotiations, but the problem was that we could not speak about this publicly. There was criticism from the members of their families too, because we could not tell them what we were doing, because it might have disrupt the process,` Saakashvili said and congratulated the families on the release of the sailors.
