U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter, on Monday, voiced the U.S. government’s perspective “that we want and need Georgia to be anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions. This together with deepening Georgia’s democracy is deeply, deeply in our international interest.”

In his panel interview in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Carpenter said the EU has been “very clear” about what is required for Georgia’s EU perspective, stressing “Georgians have paid a huge price and they deserve to be integrated into Euro-Atlantic institutions because they are European culturally, historically and politically as a democracy.”

“This is the window of opportunity, this is when one would think this government would redouble efforts, that every stone would be overturned to find the way to march through this one window of time which may not appear for some time in the future and pursue that European perspective and the same is really true of NATO; it will take in both cases decisions by allies in the case of NATO, by member states in the case of EU but there is the opportunity here.

The EU has been very clear about what is required, the 12 points, things like media pluralism, independence of the judiciary, deoligarchization. These are critical steps that Georgia has to take, so now the question is if this is your strategic compass, this is where you want your country to go then it is your incumbent government right now to really focus all attention and resources to make it happen and so we will support the effort but it is really up to folks here,” he added.