NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly support for Georgia to proceed to the Membership Action Plan (MAP), the next step of cooperation with the North-Atlantic alliance, is of “huge importance,” especially ahead of the NATO summit in Riga on November 28-29, officials in Tbilisi say.
“A similar resolution passed by the NATO PA in May [2006] contributed largely to the introduction of an Intensified Dialogue for Georgia by NATO in September,” MP Nika Rurua, deputy chairman of the Georgian parliamentary committee for defense and security, said.
In a resolution passed on November 17 at an annual session in Québec, Canada, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly called on alliance member states and partners “to support fully Georgia’s aspirations for Euro-Atlantic integration and its wish to move, in due course, to the next level of co-operation with NATO, namely the Membership Action Plan.”
Western diplomats say that although NATO will reaffirm its open-door policy at its summit in Riga, the alliance is not expected to make any decisions about Georgia.
“I don’t see new decisions being taken at Riga that would affect Georgia but I would see the process continuing of the open-door policy,” Kurt Volker, the U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, said in a DVC session with a group of Georgian journalists on November 20.
He added that Washington is “a very strong supporter” of Georgia’s NATO integration.
“And I would predict that we will be early supporters of Georgia’s Membership Action Plan at a point in the future as well. But, there’s a lot of work to be done based on the intensified dialogue that’s there before we get to that point. We very much expect to lead this process,” he said.
It is expected that the Riga summit will voice NATO’s readiness to invite Albania, Croatia and Macedonia – countries that have MAPs with NATO – at its next summit in 2008.
“We are advocating an open and a forward-looking approach to enlargement, both in the 2008 Summit and beyond,” Volker said.
“We’ll be, I believe, saying [at the summit] that NATO intends to invite countries for membership who meet NATO’s performance-based criteria at its next meeting, next summit meeting in 2008, so we hope to see some invitations in 2008, and specific reference is made to the Membership Action Plan countries,” he added.
He noted that Georgia has done a lot in the way of reforms, including strengthening democratic institutions and fighting corruption, but added that there is yet more to do.
“Market economic reform is going on very well, defense budgets, defense planning, and defense reform – I think there’s more work to do there, [also in respect to the] judiciary,” Volker said.
The U.S. diplomat also stressed the importance of having “a steady political approach to dealing with the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia” in order to “avoid getting drawn into any kind of conflict over these areas or a conflict with Russia.”
“And of course we urge Russia, to deescalate tensions with Georgia,” he added.
On November 16 the U.S. Senate passed a bill sponsored by Dick Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, calling for “the timely admission” of Albania, Croatia, Georgia and Macedonia to NATO.
“[These kinds of resolutions] help to show that there is broad support in the U.S. for moving ahead with the NATO enlargement process,” Kurt Volker said.
