In a speech on December 4, Mikheil Saakashvili promised that the separatist regime in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia would be dislodged “within a matter of months” if he is re-elected in January.

The United National Movement leader was talking to students at Tbilisi State University, a day after his official election campaign got under way.

“Uniting Georgia is the main aim of my life,” he told students, adding that de facto president Eduard Kokoity’s separatist regime was “like a loose tooth ready for removal.”

Reasserting central control over the separatist region would take “a matter of weeks—months at the very most. I’m absolutely sure of this. I have precise information to prove it,” Saakashvili added.

He also said calm had been maintained in the conflict region for the past few months owing to Georgia’s enhanced capability to react to every “provocation” with a “ten-fold response.”

This latest promise comes days after Saakashvili assured IDPs from Abkhazia that they would be able to return to their homes in a matter of months.

Also on December 4, Koba Subeliani, the newly-appointed Minister of Refugees and Resettlement, told IDPs residing at the Hotel Okros Satsmisi in Tbilisi, that they could expect improved living conditions after government-sponsored rehabilitation, according to the television channel Rustavi 2.

Along with addressing social issues, solving Georgia’s separatist conflicts is shaping up to be a cornerstone of Saakashvili’s re-election bid. Bringing the former separatist region of Adjara back into the fold was an early triumph of Saakashvili’s first presidential term.

Aside from his tough words on South Ossetia, Saakashvili promised students GEL 100 prizes for outstanding work, an increase in exchange program opportunities, and improvements in university facilities.

However, an Equality Institute NGO representative alleged that two students who had planned to attend an anti-violence demonstration outside the university—in protest at the reported dispersal of a youth rally in Batumi on Monday—had been kidnapped by Interior Ministry officers and taken to Kaspi forest, near Tbilisi.