Defence Minister: All NATO members offer to empower Georgia’s defences

Georgia’s Defence Minister Tinatin Khidasheli says Georgia gained "very high assessments” from all North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members and received concrete offers to better empower Georgia’s defences. 

At the Georgia-NATO Commission meeting in Brussels, Belgium, Khidasheli raised the issue of creating a Georgia-NATO Substantial Package trust fund, which would offer greater support to the package. She hoped this would be accepted by NATO shortly.

The initiative has been applauded by all attendees of the Georgia-NATO Commission meeting,” Khidasheli said. 

The Minister emphasised yesterday’s Georgia-NATO Commission meeting was "fruitful” with certain offers from all 28 Alliance members. 

Khidasheli stated up to now only 20 NATO members were providing support to Georgia to implement the Substantial Package. 

Now we received offers from all 28 member states and concrete initiatives on how they will encourage our self defence capabilities, intelligence services, navy and aviation directions, and so on.”

We were promised that Georgia should wait for more NATO facilitators and instructors, which is the main task of these meetings,” Khidasheli said.

During the NATO-Georgia Commission meeting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg praised Georgian reforms and called on Russia to reverse its recognition of Georgia’s de facto regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Tskhinvali).