For
immediate release
17
April 2007
PRESS
COMMUNIQUE - COMMUNIQUE PRESSE
NATO
PARLIAMENTARIANS TO HOLD MAJOR EVENT IN TBILISI, GEORGIA
GeorgiaÂ’s
progress towards Euro-Atlantic integration will be at the centre of the NATO
Parliamentary Assembly 65th Rose-Roth seminar to be held in
Tbilisi, 19-21 April,
jointly organised with the Parliament of Georgia. Parliamentarians, together
with academics, experts and government officials, will discuss the
South CaucasusÂ’ relations with the European Union and NATO, as well as the regionÂ’s
security challenges, most notably the unresolved conflicts in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia.
The meeting
will be opened by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and NATO PA
President José Lello, together with the Speaker of the Georgian
Parliament Nino Burjanadze and the Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs
Artis Pabriks.
Russian
parliamentarians will participate for the first time in a NATO PA meeting in
Georgia
since political tensions seriously damaged relations between
Moscow and
Tbilisi in 2006.
Andrey Kelin, Director of the CIS Department in the Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, will also address the seminar.
The EU
Special Representative for the South
Caucasus, Peter Semneby, will brief
parliamentarians on the UnionÂ’s role in the
region.
Other
sessions will be addressed amongst others, by Gela Bezhuashvili, Georgian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giorgi Baramidze, Georgian Vice Prime
Minister and State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, and
Ambassador Roy Reeve, Head of the OSCE Mission to
Tbilisi.
For
further information, please contact
Andrea
Cellino :+32 478 554 811
NATO
Parliamentary Assembly
Place
du Petit Sablon 3, 1000 Brussels,
Belgium
Tél:
(32) 2 513 28 65 | Fax: (32) 2 514 18 47 |
website:
http:// www.nato-pa.int
|
Background
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly, founded
in 1955 with a Brussels-based secretariat,
brings
together 248 national parliamentarians from the 26 NATO countries.
In
addition, 15 associate delegations from Central and
Eastern
Europe,
Ukraine
and Russia;
4 Mediterranean
Associate delegations: Morocco,
Algeria,
Jordan,
Israel
and
7 Parliamentary Observer delegations participate in Assembly activities and
meetings