Government of Georgia government.gov.ge |
Panel Discussion “The Fault Lines of Eurasia”
2017-02-18 Georgia is a country striving to be a member of the European family and the Euro-Atlantic community. A country building a stable future despite all challenges, - stated the Prime Minister of Georgia during a panel discussion "The Fault Lines of Eurasia". Respective event was held within the framework of the 53rd Security Conference n Munich. According to Giorgi Kvirikashvili, challenges facing Georgia are quite serious. " Georgia's territorial integrity is violated, and two of our historic territories are occupied by Russia, but even against this backdrop, we try to stay consistent, first of all, with our foreign policy goals. Also constructive to preparing ground for a long-term solution of our problems. The Prime Minister indicated that regional projects linking Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project is one of the examples of such cooperation. According to him, this initiative creates new opportunities arising from the Silk Road's "One Belt-One Road" initiative linking Europe and Asia. According to the Prime Minister, education was set as the number one priority for the country, matching the gaps between demand and supply of the education system. Thus, regional cooperation and regional stability remain the cornerstone of stability in our region. Against this quite challenging backdrop, we are trying to give some example of using all resources to create inner stability in order to provide long-term development prospects for our countries", - was noted by the Prime Minister. "The cornerstone principle for bringing stability not in our region but throughout the continent is territorial integrity and revisiting borders of the countries is extremely dangerous. So we are in a situation now, when we have fences on our territories, we have ethnic Georgians are captured almost every day for casually crossing the so called "borders", where ethnic Georgians are deprived of the right of acquiring mother language education. Despite our very constructive and consistent approach and steps, especially starting from 2012, we had some progress in economic dimensions, but we had absolutely no progress in political dimensions. We have treaties of integration with so called Abkhazia and South Ossetia; we have swallowing of law enforcement and military structures of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into the Russian administrative space. And this process is going on. What is the remedy or the solution? According to the Prime Minister of Georgia, the NATO membership is not something that the nation is preoccupied by, but this is a family of countries with certain values and principles where Georgia feels it belongs. "This is not a foreign policy aspiration for Georgia, but it defines the existential needs for Georgia and it defines the internal DNA for Georgia's reforms. So NATO is something we believe we belong to and the European family is we believe we belong to. And we are very gradual, very consistent, but also very patient. And we believe that there will be, some day, a window of opportunity for Georgia, provided, we stay consistent and dedicated on this path. But we are also constructive. We try to send messages that we don't want any membership for hostility, we want our territorial integrity to be restored and we want our sovereignty to be realized. Sovereignty is a sovereign decision of a nation to belong to one or another club. And we have made our decision", - Giorgi Kvirikashvili noted. Prime Minister of Georgia took part in the discussion "Fault Lines of Eurasia" alongside with the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Estonia.
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