Defense Minister Levan Izoria, who is on a two-day official visit to Bucharest, held a meeting with his Romanian counterpart Mihai Fifor on January 31, and signed a bilateral cooperation plan that envisions closer partnership between the two ministries.

According to the Romanian Defense Ministry, the two officials discussed “topics of mutual interest related to bilateral cooperation, the current state of relations between the two countries and the new prospects for enhancing defense dialogue.”

The Romanian Defense Ministry added that the ministers “agreed on initiating a consultation process on identifying new defense cooperation projects, while taking into account the developments of the current security environment in the Black Sea region.”

Levan Izoria said in his remarks after the meeting that it was “symbolic” that he paid his first foreign visit in 2018 to Romania. “With this visit we underlined the high level of cooperation between our countries in the Black Sea region and that we are actively involved in the dialogue on strengthening security in the region,” Izoria noted.

On February 1, Izoria held a meeting with Foreign Minister Teodor Meleşcanu, with the two discussing a broad range of issues, including participation of Romanian monitors in the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia and Georgia’s NATO aspirations.