For immediate release                                                                                                       17 April 2007

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 65^th 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