Either MAP or Nothing – Tbilisi Tells NATO

Any “artificial” assurance from NATO less than Membership Action Plan (MAP) will be unacceptable for Georgia, Davit Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister, told journalists after returning from Brussels.

“Any artificial mechanisms, which will be invented specifically for Georgia and Ukraine and which will be something between an Intensified Dialogue, where we are currently, and MAP, where we want to move to, are unacceptable for us,” Bakradze said. “Georgia deserves MAP and the decision should be very simple: either there is MAP or there is no MAP.”

A NATO summit in Bucharest on April 2-4 will decide on Georgia and Ukraine’s appeal for 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.”