NATO-Georgia Training Centre to open in fall
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The NATO-Georgia joint Training and Assessment Centre will open in Tbilisi by the end of the fall, Deputy Minister of Defence Levan Girsiashvili said today.
Girsiashvili made this announcement at a joint press-conference with the head of the Georgia NATO Liaison Office William Lahue, after meeting with the NATO Assessment Team who arrived in Georgia earlier today to study the process of establishing the joint Training Centre.
In response to Russia’s claim that the Centre could be dangerous for them, Deputy Minister Girsiashvili said the facility "posed no threat” as the Centre was not a military base.
"There are some opinions … that the Centre might pose a threat to someone. I want to stress that establishing the Training Centre, which was foreseen by the NATO-Georgia Substantial Package, is not a danger because it is not a military base but a centre for training and assessment,” he said.
The Georgian official said a decision about the final location of the Centre had not been made yet.
"We give great importance to the involvement of NATO and its allies in the establishment of the Centre because this is essential for reaching our goals successfully. After the visit of the NATO Assessment Team, we will determine the location and the first draft of the project according to the presented recommendations,” he noted.
From the NATO side, Lahue also spoke about the peaceful purposes of the Centre and noted the main goal of its establishment was to support Georgia.
"It is very important to understand that we present this Centre as an organisation which aims to support Georgia. The organisation will be located on the Georgian military base. Several officers of NATO will be present at the base but they will work together with their Georgian colleagues because this is not a threat seen from the military angle,” he concluded.
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Georgia’s NATO membership process and the details of the NATO-Georgia Substantial Package were discussed at a meeting between Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.
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