Scheffer on NATO-Georgia Commission Meeting

Georgian and NATO defense ministers discussed Georgia’s defense priorities for 2009, including review of national security strategy; NATO’s assistance and general security situation in the country, the Secretary General of the alliance, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said February 20.

The meeting was held in frames of the NATO-Georgia Commission on a sideline of an informal meeting of NATO defense ministers in Krakow.

Scheffer noted at a news conference that NATO’s assistance was “not with weapons, but with support for planning, as well as with airspace management and other areas.”

He said that Georgia’s Defense Minister, Davit Sikharulidze raised at the meeting the general security situation in Georgia, including in the context of Russia’s intentions to establish military bases in breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Scheffer said that allies “strongly disagree” that the Russia position had not changed, including on recognition of two breakaway regions and intention to station bases there. He said he had raised the issue at a meeting with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sergey Ivanov, in Munich earlier this month.

“That is a crystal clear that we do not agree with Russia there; we fundamentally disagree,” Scheffer said.

He, however, said that this disagreement did not mean that NATO should stop gradual reengagement with Russia.

“We should use NATO-Russia Council – and at the moment we do it as you know on informal basis – to discuss exactly these things where we fundamentally disagree. It will not be easy to find an agreement there… but let’s discuss it and I think that is finally in the interests of Georgia as well,” he said.

Scheffer said that two weeks ago when he met with President Saakashvili in Munich, the latter told him that Georgia was in the process of looking into possibility of sending troops to Afghanistan. “I know that the intention is there and that is a very positive signal,” Scheffer added.

Georgia’s Foreign Minister, Grigol Vashadze, said on February 18 that Tbilisi had decided to send one company to contribute NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

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