NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, James Appaturai is on a visit to Georgia.
In his remarks to the media, Appaturai underscored that “the Bucharest commitment that Georgia will become a member of NATO remains. Do not expect any change to that.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Georgia’s efforts to join NATO, and the needed reforms were the three reasons he listed for visiting Georgia.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine profoundly destabilized the region, but also the Euro-Atlantic area more broadly and it is very important that democratic like-minded countries stand close together, and work harder to defend our security and our values. Georgia is one of those countries, our close NATO allies and it’s very important that we work more closely together in this time,” he asserted.
Alluding to Georgia-NATO cooperation, he went on to say that “there is already a lot of NATO in Georgia and a lot of Georgia in NATO but we want more of both.”
He stated that the meetings with the government and opposition covered reforms and practical cooperation in other areas, energy security, and cyber security among them.
“The reforms have to continue. There has been a lot of progress. We are also concerned that political polarization is holding up the implementation of some reforms. The Secretary General conveyed just last week to the Prime Minister that we were encouraged that the very controversial law was withdrawn. As I was just told it will not be reintroduced but it was certainly an illustration of political polarization. You heard me saying political polarization many many times over many years and I am a little bit discouraged to see it has not improved all that much but it is very important that progress is made in this regard, including as we look forward to the NATO summit, taking place in July. There of course a full range of issues will be on NATO’s agenda but also how we engage with Georgia and how we look at wider integration issues that negotiation is still taking place,” he asserted.
