Senior MPs: Kremlin-Backed Anti-NATO Campaign on in Georgia
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 23 Feb.'07 / 16:47

An anti-NATO campaign that has recently been pushed by a number of marginalized political forces in Georgia is sponsored by the Kremlin, influential lawmakers from the ruling National Movement party said at a news conference on February 23.

Activists from the National Forum and Traditionalist parties have questioned Georgia’s NATO ambitions, claiming that Georgia should pursue neutrality instead.  

“This is one of the forms of an anti-NATO campaign developed by [Russian President’s aide] Modest Kolerov, who is charge of Georgia in the Kremlin. This program has already been implemented in Ukraine; however their efforts with regard to Georgia have no future… It seems, that there is serious competition within certain groups of opposition political parties to fill in the vacant position of [wanted ex-security chief of Georgia] Igor Giorgadze's [party],” MP Givi Targamadze, the Chairman of Parliamentary Committee for Defense and Security, said.
 
He said that the anti-NATO campaign is based on two “false concepts.”

“The first one is a lie that says NATO Secretary General [Jaap de Hoop Scheffer] pledged to accept Georgia into NATO without its territories [of Abkhazia and South Ossetia]… And the second one is based on an idea that Georgian neutrality will lead to Russian concessions and the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity,” MP Targamadze added.

MP Giga Bokeria said that although the Georgian authorities do not take any of the political parties engaged in this anti-NATO campaign “seriously, we still deem it necessary to respond” to their allegations.

Both parliamentarians called on all opposition parties to voice their positions on Georgia’s NATO accession “clearly and bluntly.”

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