NATO CHIEF TO DISCUSS ALLIANCE`S COOPERATION WITH GEORGIA
Baku, September 30 (AZERTAC). NATO secretary-general Anders Fog Rasmussen will discuss development of cooperation between the North Atlantic alliance and Georgia here on Thursday, reported the Georgian Foreign Ministry, according to Itar-Tass.
Rasmussen will visit Georgia for the first time as NATO secretary-general. Earlier, he had visited Tbilisi as Danish prime minister in August 2008.
According to the Foreign Ministry`s information, the alliance chief will meet the Georgian president, parliament speaker, prime minister and the foreign minister. On October 1, he will attend the opening ceremony of the NATO mission in Tbilisi.
Tbilisi regards as very important the two-day visit by the secretary-general to Georgia. Parliament speaker David Bakradze appraises it as a prerequisite for Georgia to become a NATO member. “NATO took an obligation at the Bucharest summit (April 2008) that Georgia will be the alliance`s member. The matter in question now is time and technical questions: when and in what form this will take place,” Bakaradze said.
Rasmussen stated in New York on September 23 that he “will come to Tbilisi and will record again the alliance`s invariable stand on inviolability of Georgia`s territorial sovereignty”.
A day later, US Ambassador to Georgia John Bass said that the visit by the NATO secretary-general to Tbilisi is evidence of the positive attitude of the NATO leadership to Georgia and to the process of this country`s integration in the alliance.
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