NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and diplomats from NATO’s senior decision-making body, North Atlantic Council (NAC), will visit Georgia on November 9-10, Grigol Vashadze, the Georgian foreign minister, said on Monday.

The visit will be an opportunity for NATO officials “to ascertain on the ground how fast our country is developing and how our macroeconomic parameters, our democratic reforms, our defense budget and our participation in peacekeeping missions are in line with NATO standards,” Vashadze said.

He was speaking with journalists on a sideline of the annual ambassadorial conference in Tbilisi, which gathered Georgian diplomats accredited abroad to discuss the country’s foreign policy priorities.

The North Atlantic Council, comprising of the 28 NATO permanent representatives and the Secretary General, first visited Georgia in September, 2008 – a month after the war between Georgia and Russia.

At the time Russia condemned the visit saying it was “untimely, which does not correspond to the interests of stabilization in the region.”