NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, left, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili seen at a joint news conference in Tbilisi, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008. NATO's chief declared Tuesday that Russian tanks and troops cannot block Georgia from joining NATO, but he acknowledged internal disagreement over how long the pro-Western nation must wait for membership in the alliance.
Photo: AP
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NATO Defended Georgia Against Internal Enemy
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and ambassadors of the alliance met in Tbilisi to inaugurate the NATO-Georgia Commission. De Hoop Scheffer condemned Russia’s military actions against Tbilisi and expressed solid support to today’s leadership of Georgia, but he evaded making any commitments about giving the Membership Action Plan to that country.
The two-day meeting of NATO ambassadors in Tbilisi that ended yesterday gave no answer about the date of inviting Georgia to join the alliance. “Despite the crisis, despite the very difficult political situation Georgia is facing today, NATO ambassadors and I have come to support Georgia, to show Georgia that we are interested in its ambition for Euro-Atlantic integration,” Reuters quoted de Hoop Scheffer as saying during the news conference. According to the NATO chief, the factor of the Russian Federation couldn’t be ignored when discussing the problems of Georgia and their solution.
It looks like Tbilisi hadn’t counted on getting direct answer. “We knew beforehand that NATO wouldn’t name any definite date,” a source in Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said on condition of anonymity.
According to the sources with Georgia’s leadership, the general uncertainty roots in the disagreement between the United States and major European states about admitting Georgia to the alliance. Besides, the September variant of Medvedev-Sarkozy plan is turning into another cause for the dispute. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza that arrived in Tbilisi yesterday pledged that Washington would raise a question about the extent of Europe’s acknowledgement that Russia had practically refused to execute its commitments under the six-point peace plan.
Washington insists that Russia should pull out the troops not only of buffer zones but also of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as the Sarkozy-brokered plan specified the withdrawal to positions before August 8.
Anyway, for Tbilisi, the most vital result of the recent meeting of NATO is the inauguration of the NATO-Georgia Commission that is expected to intensify political dialogue, control Georgia’s closing-in with NATO, coordinate NATO’s aid to Georgia and monitor progress in the democratic reforms there. In NATO, they condition the decision about the Membership Action Plan to Georgia’s ability to improve democratic reforms.
But the alliance will hardly pressurize Mikheil Saakashvili en route to democracy. De Hoop Scheffer refused to meet spokesmen of the opposition in Georgia despite that their meeting had been planned in advance. Tbilisi viewed the refusal as the conformation that the West wasn’t intending to replace Georgia’s president in today’s environment.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 17, 2008
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