Azernews.Az

By Sabina Idayatova

The United States will continue to assist Georgia during the transition period, on the basis of guidelines of the charter of strategic cooperation, the U.S. State Department said in a report after analyzing Georgian-American relations following the victory of opposition coalition Georgian Dream in the October 1 parliamentary elections.

"I believe that we have good reasons to be optimistic about the future of US-Georgian relations," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Eric Rubin, who visited Georgia in mid-October and presented the report.

"We pledge our continued support to Georgia in this period of transition. We have strong relations and look forward to continuing cooperation with the new government of Georgia," the report says.

"We have a very useful framework for our continuing dialogue with Georgia: the Charter on Strategic Partnership and the associated U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Commission. This dialogue is built on four pillars or areas of cooperation: further strengthening Georgia's democratic institutions; deepening our cooperation on regional and global security issues; boosting economic ties; and deepening people-to-people cultural exchanges. We plan to hold regularly-scheduled sessions of the Commission and its working groups, starting as early as next month with members of the new government," Rubin said.

It was stated that both President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili's teams are willing to continue the path of Euro-Atlantic integration and eventual NATO membership.

"The United States strongly supports Georgian aspiration to NATO. As it was stated in Bucharest and reaffirmed at NATO's following summits, Georgia will become a member of NATO. Georgia is already making important contributions to Alliance goals through its contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. With the deployment of a second battalion this month, Georgia becomes the largest non-NATO contributor to the ISAF mission," Rubin said.

"In addition to our efforts through NATO, we have a long-standing security cooperation relationship through the Strategic Partnership Commission. President Obama and President Saakashvili agreed in January 9, 2009 to build upon existing successful programs to help the Georgian military continue its reform and defense modernization efforts that support Georgia's self-defense, sustain its work with ISAF in Afghanistan, and help it operate more effectively with NATO," he added.

The State Department official also noted that, in the economic sphere, Washington hopes to continue the enhanced economic relationship, in accordance with the high-level dialogue that the two presidents announced in order to strengthen trade ties, including the possibility of a free trade agreement.

This High-Level Trade and Investment Dialogue was launched in May to explore a range of mechanisms, to continue strengthening trade relations, to update an investment agreement and other measures that could facilitate trade and investments between the two countries.

"We also look forward to continuing our engagement with the government of Georgia to strengthen workers' rights. We would be glad to see that the new government has reconsidered the Labor Code," the report says.

US Ambassador to Georgia Richard Norland said during a meeting with Georgian Finance Minister Nodar Khaduri on Wednesday that the U.S. will support the financial stability of Georgia during the transition period.

According to the ambassador, one of the major projects undertaken by the United States in Georgia is Millennium Challenge program, which aims to provide aid to countries in transition.

The parties discussed the program's goals and progress of projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The key goal of Millennium Challenge Georgia Program is to reduce poverty through economic growth. This program is administered by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which was developed by the US government to provide aid to countries in transition.

In 2004, Georgia was nominated among 16 countries viewed as potential recipients of the funding. Each of these countries met 16 criteria, three of which were major ones: ruling justly, investing in people and economic freedom. The two priorities of the government of Georgia outlined were infrastructure rehabilitation and enterprise development.