Obama: We’ll do more to strengthen Georgia’s defence capacity

President of the United States (US) Barack Obama says NATO will do more to help Georgia strengthen its defence capacity.

Obama spoke at a press conference after day one of the NATO Summit in the Polish capital Warsaw yesterday.

We’re bolstering our efforts on NATO’s southern flank. The Alliance will increase our support to EU naval operations in the Mediterranean to stop arms traffickers and go after criminals that are exploiting desperate migrants,” Obama said.

And we’re going to do more to help partners from North Africa to the Middle East to Georgia strengthen their own defence capacity,” he added.

Shortly after this, the White House published a fact sheet on its website about US and NATO efforts to support NATO partners, including Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.

The United States strongly supports NATO’s cooperation with its partners as a means to more effectively share burdens and further our common security goals,” the White House said.

The document stressed the US had enhanced its bilateral security assistance to Georgia to increase the country's defence capacity and NATO interoperability of its forces.

In FY15 (the 2015 financial year) the United States committed an additional $20 million in Foreign Military Financing through the European Reassurance Initiative, bringing Georgia’s security assistance up to $30 million. Security assistance to Georgia remains high in FY16, and is projected to remain so in FY17,” the White House said.

It added that this assistance would further Georgia’s goals of professionalising and modernising the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces, promote NATO interoperability, enable Georgia to continue to deploy its forces to Afghanistan, and support the development and enhancement of training and education facilities.

The document mentioned Georgia had participated in nine US-sponsored exercises annually.

Read more about the US and NATO assistance for Georgia here.