EUobserver: “Nato should keep Georgia on its mind at summit“

Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation convening for the alliance’s Brussels summit should seek to break the deadlock in admitting Georgia as a member, notes a new article on the website of Brussels-based EUobserver website.

Published ahead of the summit, which will see representatives of 29 member states and partner nations gather in the city on July 11 and 12, the opinion piece outlines Georgia’s expectations from the event.

No other aspirant country has so many initiatives with Nato as Georgia. In any objective analysis Georgia is a poster child for Nato enlargement”, note authors Amanda Paul and Ana Andguladze in the article.

While admitting that "the Russian factor hangs over every enlargement decision” by the alliance, they maintain that NATO "should not give Putin veto power over a sovereign country's decision on the vital issue of security”.

The analysis refers to a proposed approach to "break[ing] the deadlock”, outlined in

A recent report for Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based organisation promoting conservative policies, by Luke Coffey.

[Coffey's solution is for NATO] to grant membership by temporarily excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Nato's Article 5 security guarantee”, explain the two authors.

The EUobserver article also goes into detail on Georgia’s extensive cooperation with the alliance and the obsolescence of the Membership Action Plan as the mechanism for realising Georgia’s NATO aspirations.

Read the full story here: euobserver.com