Tbilisi: NATO praised Georgia on Thursday for elections which saw a peaceful power transfer from President Mikheil Saakashvili’s party to a billionaire-led coalition.
“This is a sign and a demonstration of Georgia becoming a normal country - a normal country where governments change through the ballot box,” said James Appathurai, the NATO secretary general’s special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia.
NATO had previously described the October 1 parliamentary elections as a “litmus test” for Georgia’s aspirations to join the Western military alliance.
“It’s a test which has been passed,” Appathurai told a news conference in Tbilisi.
After defeating Saakashvili’s party at the polls, victorious coalition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili said he would continue the ex-Soviet state’s bid to join NATO.
The alliance has promised Georgia that it will become a member at an unspecified point in the future - a position that Appathurai reaffirmed.
“NATO remains absolutely committed to Georgia,” he said.
Georgia now has 800 troops serving with the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
Irakli Alasania, who has been nominated as defence minister in Ivanishvili’s incoming government, said Thursday that Georgia would continue deploying troops until NATO’s combat mission ends in 2014.
“At that exact time we will begin taking care of our boys’ return to the motherland,” he told journalists.
Speaking after attending the funeral of the 18th Georgian serviceman to be killed while serving in Afghanistan, Alasania said that such deaths were “the load which Georgia bears for the sake of international security”.
