Five EU Foreign Ministers Visit Tbilisi
The Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Slovenian and Swedish foreign ministers arrived in Tbilisi for a one-day visit on May 12 amid Russo-Georgian tensions and ahead of the May 21 parliamentary elections.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said on May 11 the visit would “demonstrate support for Georgia’s European integration aspirations, its territorial integrity and encourage maintaining calm in a difficult situation.”
Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, was quoted by RFE/RL as saying on Sunday in Vilnius: “The fact that we are leaving from here very early tomorrow morning to go down to Tbilisi to meet the leadership of Georgia is related not only to the fact that we want to give them – and I in my capacity as president of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, in particular – a clear message concerning the importance of European standards in upcoming parliamentary elections, but also to express our solidarity with Georgia as to the territorial integrity of Georgia.”
The foreign ministers plan to meet with President Saakashvili; Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze and Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili.
On May 11 the four EU foreign ministers from Lithuania, Poland, Sweden and Slovenia, met in Vilnius and announced after talks that they had reached an agreement to get Lithuania to lift its veto on launching talks on a new EU partnership agreement with Russia. Petras Vaitiekunas, the Lithuanian foreign minister, said that the veto was lifted as the EU had agreed to include Lithuania’s concerns – including the conflicts in Georgia – in the negotiations with Russia.
