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Saakashvili Urged Sarkozy Meeting during Six Months

June 9, 2010
Isabelle Lasserre, Le Figaro

He has been urging Nicola Sarkozy meeting for six months already. The Élysée Palace finally agreed to satisfy the request of the president of Georgia. Leader of Georgia will remain in Paris until Wednesday and prime-minister of Russia, Vladimer Putin, will replace him in France.

Today, we see that the relationships between Tbilisi and Paris have warmed up after they had worsened following the Élysée Palace attempts to improve its relationship with the Kremlin. And still, there is one more unresolved problem – the decision of the French side to sell the Mistral to Russia (many call this warship a pearl of the French Fleet). Georgia, part of whose territory is still occupied by the Russian army, claims that this agreement between France and Russia might change the balance of strategic powers in the region. We should recall the words of the Head of General HQ of Russia, who said that during the war in August 2008, the Mistral could allow the Black Sea Fleet of Russia to “finish all operations in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours.”

Georgian people are concerned about the selling of military technologies to Russia. They think that similar decision is unreasonable in the view of the political situation.

“Could a state, which achieved to sign peace-agreement and mediated in the Russian-Georgian war in August of 2008, agree to supply one party with weapons at the expense of the second party? All these contradict the role of peace-keeping completely,” stated the Georgian diplomat.

Although Georgia intends to discuss this issue with the government of France, they do not want to have any conflict with the Élysée Palace at all.

“It is not important whether the contract will be signed or not. Russia has already become such an important political symbol: the country, which mediated the cease-fire agreement, agreed to sell the weapon to the party which breaches the agreement! The worst has already happened. We are not going to fight France because of it,” stated the representative of the Georgian side.

After losing the five-day war in 2008, Georgia is looking for new partners in the West today. France is the most logic candidate in this view. The point is that the relations between France and Russia are not as smooth as many people think. Moscow refuses to execute the requirements of the agreement with Tbilisi and this causes serious discontent in Paris. One more important thing is that the negotiations on the purchase of Mistral are prolonged for no concrete results. The Kremlin wants to construct three out of four ships in Russia. The Élysée Palace wants to construct two ships in Saint-Nazaire.

Besides that, Georgian leaders are eager to gain the support of Paris in their aspiration towards EU. Recently, America has become less involved in the region affairs; this is confirmed by their moderate response in August of 2008. “French people did the opposite – they assist us to achieve agreement in the negotiations with the EU. We need the support of one of the most important member-states,” explained the representative of Georgia.

Similar political support is more important for Tbilisi because their strategic priorities have essentially changed since the August conflict. Georgia, who is under threat of the military intervention of the huge and inflexible neighbor, has been knocking on the door of NATO for a long time already to get guarantees of defense from the Russian bear.

“But if earlier, our short-term priority goal was membership in NATO, and EU membership was long-term perspective, today we think that being closer to the EU is the best source to integrate into NATO,” said a Georgian expert.

It is noteworthy that conclusion of the group of Madeleine Albright on the future of the North-Atlantic Alliance had an effect of cold shower for Georgian people because the conclusion locked the way to their reintegration into NATO in the near future. So, Tbilisi hopes that Paris will assist them to break this tendency before the Lisbon Summit scheduled for the end of the year.


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