Biden, Georgia must remain united

TBILISI, Georgia, July 23 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden promised the Georgian Parliament Thursday the United States will not recognize Georgia's breakaway regions.

"I speak not only on behalf of myself as vice president, but I speak for my president, President Obama, as well as my country," Biden said. "I come here on behalf of the United States with a simple, straightforward message: We, the United States, stand by you on your journey to a secure, free and democratic, and once again united, Georgia."

Earlier, before a meeting with Biden, President Mikheil Saakashvili said Georgia's decision to become a free nation allied with Europe was irreversible.

"We are a country under attack, under partial occupation, but despite all of this our choice is irreversible," Saakashvili said.

In his speech to Parliament, Biden looked back to Georgia's brief history as an independent country after World War I and its declaration of independence 70 years later when the Soviet Union broke up. He said the timing of his visit, two weeks after Obama's trip to Moscow was deliberate.

"As I said in Munich in the first days after our administration was sworn in, and as President Obama, I might add, reasserted two weeks ago in Moscow, we stand by the principle that sovereign democracies have the right to make their own decisions, and choose their own partnerships and their own alliances," Biden said. "We stand against the 19th century notion of spheres of influence. It has no place in the 21st century."