Stoltenberg: “I strongly believe Warsaw Summit will recognise Georgia’s progress”

Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg "strongly believes” Georgia’s efforts and support of the Alliance will be appropriately respected at the NATO Warsaw Summit in Poland on July 8-9.

The NATO top official spoke of his expectations for Georgia at a pre-NATO Foreign Ministerial in Brussels, Belgium yesterday.

Speaking to a journalist from Georgia’s Public Broadcaster, Stoltenberg stressed the Alliance’s recent assigning of the accession treaty for Montenegro showed "NATO’s door remained open”. 

And we continue to work with Georgia, another aspirant country, and I strongly believe that the NATO Summit in July will recognise the progress Georgia is making and will reiterate our strong commitment to both provide strong political support to Georgia but also to provide practical support for Georgia,” he said. 

Stoltenberg added NATO would continue working with Georgia to implement reforms, build institutions and enhance Georgia’s ability to modernise its Armed Forces. 

I participated in the inauguration ceremony of the Joint Training [and Evaluation] Centre in Georgia some months ago and I have addressed several times with NATO allies the importance of that NATO allies provide practical support assistance to Georgia. 

So we will continue to work with Georgia, we will continue to defend Georgia’s rights to make its own decisions and we will continue to work on reforms and help Georgia moving towards NATO membership."

Georgia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikheil Janelidze attended the Ministerial, which opened earlier today and was scheduled to end tomorrow.

Janelidze will also participate in a meeting of foreign ministers whose countries were involved in NATO’s Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in war-torn Afghanistan. 

The meeting will discuss the current situation in Afghanistan and NATO’s intentions towards the country. Georgia is the largest non-NATO contributor to the RSM with 885 troops.