Georgian President visits Brussels
By Sabina Idayatova
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili started a 2-day working visit to Brussels on Tuesday.
During the visit Saakashvili is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Carnegie Brussels Center and hold bilateral meetings at different level.
Saakashvili plans to meet with President of the European
Council, Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European
Parliament, Martin Schulz.
On Monday, Saakashvili attended the 58 th Plenary session of NATO
Parliamentary Assembly in Prague and promised to continue on the
path toward NATO membership.
"My country is more than ever prepared to fulfill its membership
obligations," he said. "However, we will need your watchful eyes
and your knowledge to help ensuring that Georgia stays on the right
path; that our institutions continue to serve Georgian citizens and
are not hijacked or privatized by this marriage of amazingly huge
amounts of money and power."
During the NATO PA session, parliamentarians adopted a resolution
urging Alliance member states to help bolster democracy in Eastern
Europe, notably Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine.
The resolution recognizes Georgia's democratic progress and calls on Allied Governments to consider taking the next step towards Georgia's Euro-Atlantic integration by granting the country a Membership Action Plan (MAP).
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed concern about potentially politically-motivated trials that have taken place in Georgia since the October 1 legislative elections.
"I'm extremely concerned about the development we have seen since the elections, not least related to recent arrests of political opponents in Georgia," he told the parliamentarians, while making clear that he had no intention of interfering with legal processes in the country.
"It's for the legal system, the judicial system in Georgia to sort out these cases. But of course it's important that such trials are not undermined by political interference," he said adding that the development of this course will be followed very closely.
Saakashvili acclaimed the visit of members of the new government in Europe."I welcome the visit of the Prime Minister and I hope that it
will give him useful information and the government will be able to
assume clearly interests of Georgia," he said.
According to Saakashvili, governments are not
steady, presidents come and go, but the main issue
for Georgia is to join NATO.
On the sidelines of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Saakashvili met with US congressmen in the Czech capital on Nov. 12.
The Georgian delegation said the meeting discussed issues of Georgia's integration into NATO and European institutions.
Saakashvili informed the congressmen of the developments in Georgia after the October 1 parliamentary elections, which were won by Ivanishvili's opposition coalition Georgian Dream. He also talked about the progress the country is achieving on the path of its European integration.
Later, the Georgian president attended a reception in honor of the participants of the NATO PA session hosted by the Czech parliament.