U.S. Lays Out Position on Georgia after NATO Summit

Despite a delay in offering Membership Action Plans (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the assurance given to both countries that they would eventually join the alliance was a “real breakthrough.”

Speaking to reporters on April 3, the U.S. secretary of state said Russia had no role in the decision to delay MAP for Georgia and Ukraine. She also that the parliamentary elections in Georgia this May would be a consideration for the NATO foreign ministers in deciding on MAP for Georgia in December.

She stressed, as she put it, “the extraordinary language” of the Bucharest summit communiquй, which reads that the allies agree that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO.

“If there was an open door, I think there is now a wide open door,” Rice said, “and a couple of questions have been laid to rest: the question of whether or not NATO would ever consider Ukraine off limits, or whether NATO would consider it appropriate to have a member in the Caucasus; that question has been answered with the language that NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. And so those questions are now off the table, and it is a matter of when, not whether.”

Immediately after the summit decision, the Georgian leadership also started to redirect attention from the delay in granting MAP to, what they called, “a historic breakthrough” reflected in the wording of the communiquй, indicating that Georgia would become a NATO member. On the other hand, the Georgian leadership has also blamed, what it called, Russia’s “indirect veto” and “pressure” behind the NATO decision to delay MAP for Georgia.

“It is no secret that one country, which was not participating in these discussions [at the Bucharest summit], did its best to prevent adopting this document [communiquй] – starting from direct blackmail, threats, concrete actions, promises, and various diplomatic tricks… Everything was done to prevent us from receiving MAP,” President Saakashvili told journalists in Bucharest on April 3. “But instead, we received a direct commitment that we will become a NATO member. Today is a historical day for us, for our country, for this organization. It is equal to a geo-political revolution.”

Secretary Rice said that the text of the communiquй in itself proved that there was no evidence of Russia’s role in taking the final decision.

“I know that there has been a lot of talk about a Russian veto, there’s been a lot of talk about Russian pressure,” she said. “But if ever there were evidence that Russia did not have an effect, I think that the language “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations, we agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. MAP is the next step. Today we made clear that we support these countries’ applications for MAP, and we’ll look at this again in December,” because, as I said, the real breakthrough here is not just about MAP, but there have long been questions about whether NATO would be prepared to countenance membership for Ukraine and countenance membership for a country in the Caucasus like Georgia. And this is an unequivocal statement, yes. I do not, frankly, think that that’s probably a very popular position in Moscow.”

She also said that most NATO allies were in favor of giving Georgia and Ukraine MAP at the Bucharest summit. Although there was no disagreement that MAP should be extended to Georgia and Ukraine, Rice said, there were countries that had concerns about the timing of that move.

“There were countries who believed that there needed to be more progress on certain reform issues before MAP could be offered,” she said.

When asked what could change before December that may allow a positive decision on MAP, Rice responded: “There will be, for instance, a parliamentary election in May in Georgia. There may be some other evidence to look at.”