NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, Javier Colomina, says that one of the reasons for his visit to Georgia is to give Georgia a sense of opportunity for Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

“The purpose of my visit to Georgia was threefold. First, I wanted to continue to show support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territory integrity as I did in April. As we did in Madrid, where we had Prime Minister Garibashvili among us and where we approved the strategic concept, where we were able to reflect properly the support we provide to George’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also to its Atlantic aspirations and the Bucharest decisions. We decided that it was high time to come again in particular, since announcements of president Putin on referendums and on the partial mobilization.

The second objective is a sense of opportunity that I believe there is right now regarding your Euro-Atlantic aspirations, in particular, since the decisions by the European Union and the 12 recommendations that were approved in July. 12 recommendations that go very much in line with 10 recommendations that NATO provide to your authority a year ago through the Annual National Program. We believe there is a very clear path that was signalled with those recommendations. In that path, we are trying to cooperate with you to help Georgia and the authorities get there whenever they’re ready.

The third and very linked with this second objective was actually to convey our concern to the authorities, because of the level of implementation of the reforms. It was important to convey and I did it to your President, Prime Minister and different Ministers that the rhythm of implementation of reforms is not satisfactory. There is a concern over the readiness of Georgia to progress on the Euro-Atlantic path,” Javier Colomina said