Parliament Speaker says Georgia wants genuine strategic partnership with U.S., founded on national interests of both countries

“It is our wish that relations between Georgia and the United States of America begin afresh, as a strategic partnership oriented towards concrete results,” declared the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili.

According to Papuashvili, the previous U.S. administration regrettably terminated the strategic partnership unilaterally and unjustly, to harm Georgia.

“Fortunately, it did not succeed in harming our country. That strategic partnership was a consolation prize handed to Mikheil Saakashvili in 2009, in the wake of the 2008 defeat. It was presented as a sort of consolation prize, so that the Georgian people would not, at that very moment, drag the dictator Saakashvili out of his office. He needed something to hold in his hands to seem vindicated; yes, he had lost territories, but in exchange, he had received a special relationship with the United States of America.

This is exactly the approach we are now seeing with Ukraine, where the country is being offered associate membership of the European Union along with accelerated procedures. The German Chancellor clearly stated that all of this would only happen after a peace agreement with the Russian Federation is reached, one that would involve territories leaving Ukrainian control. That is the history of the former strategic partnership,” Papuashvili noted.

Papuashvili explained that Georgia aims to establish a strategic partnership with the United States, built on the shared national interests of both nations.

“We want this to be a genuine strategic partnership, built on the national interests of both countries, and in this respect, we are open. A delegation has arrived, meetings are taking place, and further meetings are scheduled for today. We are sharing our views. We build every relationship based on our country’s national interests. If the current administration of the United States approaches this matter through the prism of America’s genuine interests, it will find that there is a great deal of common ground between the interests of Georgia and those of the United States. The distinguished partnership that we have demonstrated to the United States over the years may now be entering a new chapter.
We are where we have always been. We do not act to curry favour with anyone; we act so that any relationship between two countries is structured around a genuine convergence of real interests. That is precisely the process we are engaged in, as the United States administration seeks to determine its own interests in Georgia.

Let us see what interests the American administration settles upon. Our goal is clear: to reunify our country and improve the well-being of our people. It is these two domestic policy objectives that our foreign policy relations are equally designed to serve,” declared Shalva Papuashvili.