NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA) President Paolo Alli spoke at the Assembly’s 2017 Spring Session in Tbilisi, as he opened the session’s plenary sitting on May 29.
Alli said that Georgia and its people have made a clear choice that the country belongs to the Euro-Atlantic community. He also said that “for the last 15 years the Assembly has actively supported Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic choice and its path towards integration,” building support for Georgia’s membership within the NATO member states’ parliaments and governments.
NATO PA debates defense burden sharing at #natopatbilisi @Gottemoeller @paoloalli Full story: https://t.co/UUb3xbQeTP #NATOmeeting pic.twitter.com/4xjgBidwg7
— NATO PA (@natopapress) May 29, 2017
The PA President commended Georgia’s armed forces for “outstanding professionalism and ability to integrate with NATO forces,” adding that “the profound transformation it has undergone for the past 15 years is in many ways remarkable.”
Alli expressed support to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and said that “the Assembly has consistently condemned Russia’s illegal and unacceptable occupation of Georgia’s provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” He also said Russia’s creeping annexation of Georgia’s regions is unacceptable, and added that the Russian Federation seeks, on a daily basis, “to grab a little more of Georgia’s land and consolidate its presence and its control.”
Alli said that Montenegro’s accession to NATO was “an important step for Georgia as well,” sending “a clear signal that NATO’s door is indeed open, and that no amount of outside pressure can prevent aspirants from pursuing their membership goal.”
During the press briefing on May 26, the first day of the PA session in Tbilisi, Alli said that the NATO PA was in Georgia to “demonstrate full support to Georgia,” as well as the country’s reforms and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Alli also said: “More and more we understand that the security and stability of Georgia is crucial for the stability of the entire region.” He added that “for us defending and supporting Georgia and Georgia’s territorial integrity is also defending and supporting our countries and our Alliance.”
Alli highlighted the fact that Georgia was one of the two countries with which NATO PA has “special relationship” in the form of the inter-parliamentary council, with another one being Ukraine.
Answering journalist’s question during the press conference, Alli noted that it had been “clearly said” during the Bucharest NATO summit in 2008 that Georgia would become a member of NATO.
On May 28, Paolo Alli visited the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) in Akhalgori district of Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia.
I visited the border of the occupied S. #Ossetia: violation of Georgian territorial integrity is a threat to the whole int. community pic.twitter.com/58bcWRb7LC
— Paolo Alli (@paoloalli) May 28, 2017
There, Alli said it was very important “to see with our eyes what is happening here in the occupied territories of Georgia,” adding that the situation on the ground was “dramatic,” and that it will be an opportunity for Alli and his colleagues to “be back in our countries and explain what is happening in Georgia.”
Alli also said that while the Georgian authorities were keeping the situation “under control,” the tension was “not decreasing.”
More than 200 lawmakers from parliaments of NATO Allies and 21 partner countries attended the Session. The four-day meeting in Tbilisi marked only the fifth time in its six-decade history that the NATO PA has held a session outside the trans-Atlantic Alliance.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian)