Georgian Officials Visit NATO HQ
Davit Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister, and Giorgi Baramidze, the state minister for Euro-Atlantic integration, are visiting NATO Headquarters in Brussels on March 26.
They will meet with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and members of the North Atlantic Council, with whom they will discuss, among other things, the implementation of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), the NATO press office reported.
The visit comes just a week before a NATO summit in Bucharest, which is expected to decide on whether to invite Georgia and Ukraine to join the Alliance’s Membership Action Plan (MAP).
The Washington Post wrote on March 24 that there were some considerations even within the U.S. administration that Georgia and Ukraine be given “some kind of temporizing assurance by NATO but not membership plan.” President Saakashvili, however, told the paper: “It’s rubbish… We can’t fool ourselves. We can’t fool our own people.”
“If we don’t get it [MAP] now, the window of opportunity could be closing, for a number of reasons,” the Washington Post quoted Saakashvili as saying. “By refusing us, [NATO] will be sending a signal to Russia of, ‘Go and get them. We are not going to mind too much.’ Russia will be emboldened. They will conclude that they are on the right track when they stir up trouble with us.”
