From Civil Georgia:  Georgian Dream leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, met with NATO Liaison Officer in Tbilisi, William Lahue, and reiterated his coalition’s commitment to NATO integration.

He said after the meeting that agenda of Georgia-NATO relations were discussed “in details” and added that the NATO representative “assured us that we have a good chance of joining NATO.”

“Problems and questions mainly are related to democratic institutions, which are not on a level on which they should be. In this respect I have explained that in the nearest future, very soon, we will manage to bring a genuine breakthrough in addressing issues of human rights, judiciary,” Ivanishvili said after the meeting.

“NATO is a political-military structure and only military training is not enough; we have also discussed this issue and we will address problems remaining in this area and we will make progress [in this area] too,” he said.

“I think that we will really manage – not superficially like our authorities have been talking about –to quickly become NATO-member country,” Ivanishvili added.  (photo: Vano Shlamov/AFP)

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