Georgian FM, Defense Minister Meet NATO Secretary General

Georgian Foreign Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Defense Minister Tina Khidasheli met on October 7 NATO Secretary General NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels and discussed Tbilisi’s expectations from NATO’s 2016 Warsaw summit. 

At the next year’s summit, Tbilisi wants from NATO to either grant Georgia a Membership Action Plan (MAP) or declare that MAP is no longer a precursor to eventual membership.

At the summit in Bucharest in 2008 NATO leaders decided that Georgia will become a member of the alliance, but MAP should be the next stage on country’s path towards eventual membership. Georgia has been denied MAP since then.

“Along with the Defense Minister, I met the Secretary General to demonstrate that NATO remains high on the Georgian government’s agenda and progress on this path is of utmost importance for the Georgian government,” said Foreign Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who is also deputy PM.

“We spoke about those specific steps that the Georgian government has to take in order to consolidate support towards the progress made by Georgia,” he said. “The Secretary General has promised his assistance in consolidating member states’ stance in order to have Georgia’s progress appropriately noted by the Alliance; time will show how it will be made – either through granting MAP or through something else. Of course MAP is a logical next step that we have to expect from the Alliance, but our eventual goal is NATO membership. That’s what we have stressed at the meeting.”

Defense Minister Khidasheli said after the meeting: “I have said it for many times previously and repeat it again that what the next phase will be called – MAP or there will be something else that would confirm that Georgia does not need MAP because of progress Georgia has made… and it is on membership path without MAP – is not important in principle.”

“These intensified contacts [with NATO] shows that we are working actively on what has to be written in [next year’s Warsaw summit] declaration; we have a very frank conversation about what our red lines are what their red lines are… I had a meeting with ambassadors of fifteen [NATO member] states, discussing these issues,”

“I am quite optimistic that the decision in Warsaw will be simple, easy to understand, leaving no room for manipulation and double interpretation. What matters is to remove all the barriers,” she said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference ahead of the NATO defense ministerial meeting in Brussels on October 8, that the Alliance and Georgia have made “great strides in our partnership over the last year.”

“We have opened a new training facility. And it has hosted its first exercise. Now we will look ahead to the coming year, and to further close cooperation between NATO and Georgia,” said Stoltenberg, who visited Tbilisi late August for the inauguration of the joint Georgia-NATO training and evaluation center outside the Georgian capital.

On October 7 the Georgian Defense Minister also met Chairman of the NATO Military Committee General Petr Pavel.

On October 8 Khidasheli will meet her counterparts from the Alliance member states in frames of the NATO-Georgia Commission.