Tbilisi Wants NATO to State at Chicago Summit ‘Georgia is Closer to Membership’

Parliamentary Chairman, Davit Bakradze, said on April 19, that Georgia would like to see in NATO Chicago Summit’s final declaration a statement saying that Georgia is now “closer to NATO membership” than ever before.

“We expect at the Chicago Summit that everything what we’ve heard [from NATO] before will be put on a paper in a form [of summit’s final declaration]. First of all, these are the statements which we have heard numerously that Georgia is closer to NATO and closer to membership to the alliance than it was in [2008 during NATO summit in] Bucharest or ever before,” Bakradze told journalists.

“So we expect this rapprochement and progress will be adequately reflected in Chicago summit’s documents,” Bakradze added.

He also said that Georgian Foreign Minister, Grigol Vashadze, held in the NATO headquarters series of productive talks, including with counterparts from number of NATO-member states on April 18-19 to discuss preparations for the NATO Chicago summit in May.

After meeting with President Saakashvili in Brussels on April 3, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, that the Alliance’s “special partnership” with Georgia would be reflected at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago in three ways.

“Firstly, reflect that Georgia is one of the major contributors to our operation in Afghanistan. Secondly, reflect that Georgia in general is a major contributor to the trans-Atlantic cooperation within the special NATO-Georgia Commission and thirdly that Georgia is also considered an aspirant country, a country that aspires to become a future member of NATO,” Rasmussen said on April 3.