Sukhumi, 22 September 1993

Dear Mr. Secretary General,

ćontinuous rocket and artillery bombardments to which for more than a week the city of Sukhumi has been subjected do not leave any time for long reflections. All my thought are about defenseless women, old people, children who have become hostages of criminal will, all my concerns are focused on how to protect them, how to repulse the organizers and participants of mass murders and destructions. Only in rare minutes of lull, being one to one with myself I have a chance to think over something.

During these minutes I mentally conversed with people on whom, as I believe, depends much. You should know that among them the UN Secretary General is one of my first and principal interlocutors.

Politicians make a lot of judgements from the heights of their mental sight. However, true knowledge comes through personal suffering, by pain experienced personally. By the will of circumstances finding myself face to face with death I now contemplate everything differently than when I was standing on the rostrum of the UN General Assembly.

When the rockets of the Soviet Air Forces destroyed the passenger plane of the Korean Airlines the shocked mankind struck the bells of alarm. At the time the term "the evil empire" was coined for the fist time. In Sukhumi within two days only 3 civil airliners were destroyed with 126 passengers among which was a three-month baby. On the same days I witnessed with my own eyes how a maternity home was destroyed by bombing whose rubble buried women in childbirth and newborns. The same lot befell a hospital which is now a common grave for wounded - peaceful citizens and defenders of the city.

And whatever was the result? Through explosions of bombs and shells, through the cries of those doomed for death not a single word of protest, an expression of indignation or anger were heard. And now I am asking myself what is going on and how to explain such indifference. Perhaps, we are so tired from mass catastrophes of the latest time that we are unable to raise against them? Maybe, something is wrong with those instruments of maintaining and securing peace which we were creating together? Perhaps, we have been so bogged in the bureaucratic comfort and well-being of the structures committed to respond to any call for help? Can it be that the world community is so blind and deaf to the universal evil?

The world community should know that empire of evil is alive and in good health and continues to sow death, to manufacture and hand out weapons of mass destruction killing peaceful and innocent people not only here.

I am asking not only myself, Mr. Secretary General, why the Security Council does not ask itself a question whence the small detachments of the Gudauta clique get the so powerful weapons and armaments which would more than suffice to destroy the whole of the Caucasus. Who manipulates this clique, who finances it, who brings supplies, and who directs it? Why nobody, the UN including, does not disclose the true reason of this tragedy and its true instigators?

I presume, that these are only rhetorical questions which, however, should be publicly put before the UN again in the interests of protecting peace and mankind.

I repeatedly addressed you warning about the severe aftermaths of this conflict for the general security and was sincerely grateful for your attention to my appeals. However, I ask not to be hurt by me - my disappointment is great and my

As before being in the midst of the rubble of this small formerly lovely town, on its dead land, I address you as the Secretary General and a man whom I have known and respected for a long time with the request: use all your authority, all you can do to stop this war and to restore peace here.

Sincerely yours

Edward Shevardnadze