Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili warned NATO countries not to appease Russia by rejecting his country's hopes to join the alliance.
He held out hopes after a White House meeting on Wednesday that US President George W. Bush can persuade NATO allies to put Georgia on a membership track when Bush attends NATO's summit in Bucharest, Romania, next month.
Bush has been a strong supporter of Georgia's aspirations, but he is expected to meet resistance from some European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Georgia's chances of joining a program that would prepare it for eventual membership will hinge on winning unanimous support of the 26 member countries.
"I don't think it's a done deal yet," Saakashvili said in a speech organized by the Atlantic Council, a group that promotes close US-European ties. "The US is engaged at the highest level; so are all east and central Europeans and some big northern and western countries."
Bush said he would press the issue at the summit.
"I believe that NATO benefits with a Georgia membership. I believe Georgia benefits from being a part of NATO," Bush said at a joint appearance with Saakashvili.
Merkel recently signaled her opposition, arguing against membership for countries "that are entangled in regional conflicts."
That was a reference to differences with Russia over Georgia's two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both regions have had de-facto independence since wars in the 1990s, when Russian peacekeepers were deployed to observe ceasefires. No country recognizes their governments, although Moscow has tacitly supported their autonomy by granting most of their residents Russian passports and maintaining trade ties.
Moscow has been vexed by Saakashvili's efforts to integrate closely into the West and join NATO.
Saakashvili, who has a law degree from Columbia University's law school, said that NATO countries should not give Russia a veto or try to appease Moscow by blocking Georgia from joining the alliance.
"Basically what it says is non-NATO members have veto rights over NATO decisions," he said at the Atlantic Council.
He said efforts to resolve differences with Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia had become entangled in Russia's disagreement with Western nations over Kosovo. Russia has warned that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia last month and the West's recognition of it could fuel other separatist movements.
"After Kosovo, the Russians told us very clearly, this is no longer about you and us, it's about us and the West," Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili was to meet yesterday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who have just returned from Moscow.
The boost from Washington for Georgia's NATO aspirations comes only months after the US and other Western countries criticized a brutal police crackdown Nov. 7 against an opposition rally in Tbilisi. After the violence, Saakashvili called an early presidential vote to ease tensions.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
RSS