From ITAR-TASS: Georgia will go ahead with its policy toward joining NATO, because this course has no alternative, President Mikhail Saakashvili said on Thursday.

“That policy was selected by a large majority of the population in the January 5, 2008 plebiscite (77 percent of the participants then said they would like their country to be a member of the alliance – Itar-Tass),” Saakashvili said in an interview on Tbilisi’s Imedi television channel.

“The sole alternative to NATO’s membership would be Georgia’s disarmament and capitalization, and this is inconceivable and impossible.” (photo: AP/Shakh Aivazov)