Anxious to raise his country's chances to join NATO, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has announced a steep increase in Georgian troops in Iraq.
Photo: Anastasia Ivanova
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Georgian Parliament Votes for NATO
The Georgian parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously for the country to join NATO. The ruling party and opposition leaders have shown that they are ready to overcome differences to help advance Georgia’s sole foreign policy objective.
All the deputies present at the parliament on Tuesday voted to approve Georgia’s plans to join NATO. “NATO is a priority for the Georgian people,” the parliament’s speaker Nino Burdzhanadze said in an interview with Kommersant. “This organization is the only guarantee for peace and stability in the region.”
Georgia declared its intentions to join NATO long ago. But the Tuesday vote was the first time that all political forces in the country rallied together to express their support for the plan.
Late February, an evaluation commission from NATO came to Georgia to monitor the military reform which is underway in the country and give a report on how to further the dialog on Tbilisi’s accession to the organization. Anxious to raise Georgia’s chances, President Mikhail Saakashvili announced a troops increase in Iraq – from 850 to 2,000 servicemen, which will make the Georgian contingent the second-largest military mission in the country.
Moscow does not hide its irritation over the NATO enlargement in the Caucasus. “We have made a stark warning to both Georgia and those who are busy inviting it to NATO that we will not have it [Georgia’s accession to NATO],” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said late February. The foreign policy chief did not mention, though, how Moscow is going to carry out the threat.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 14, 2007
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