Georgia will sign the association agreement with the EU in late June for sure, but it won’t get the MAP on joining NATO at the upcoming summit of the alliance in Wales. Such a conclusion could be made from the statements of the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier who visited Tbilisi. “We are ready to sign the European Association Agreement with Georgia no later than June,” the German Foreign Minister said. “We will not speak about Georgia’s accession to NATO,” his French colleagues added.
The Georgian authorities are not satisfied with the situation. Thus, the Georgian Foreign Minister Maya Pandzhanikidze reiterated a point about a resolution of the Bucharest summit on “certainly accepting Georgia to NATO someday” and about the unprecedented high level of activity of Georgia in Afghanistan, to where Tbilisi sent 1700 soldiers and officers, and about the decision by the Georgian authorities to send hundreds of soldiers to the Central African Republic for participation in the EU peacemaking operation. “Georgia has fulfilled all its requirements completely,” the head of the Georgian diplomacy stated.
At the same time, obviously Georgia will receive no more than an annual action plan and confirmation of its status as a NATO aspirant country at the September summit. Tbilisi understands that the annual action plan is an attempt to save face, as it is not mentioned in any of the institutional documents of the alliance. A country which gets a MAP is thought to be an official candidate for membership of NATO, while the action plan doesn’t require such a status; it is a form of partnership.
Tbilisi thinks that the main reason for not taking the Caucasus country to NATO members or at least granting it the status of a candidate is the absence of a desire to be involved in the settlement of the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are recognized as independent states by Moscow.
The Georgian elite has been trying to solve the dilemma for a long time, and finally they have created a wonderful formula. The former head of the stationary office, the political scientist Petre Mamradze, wrote about it in his blog. According to him, Georgian diplomats and politicians offer the following option to Western colleagues. Georgia recieves a MAP at the Welsh summit, which requires only the peaceful settlement of the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts; but if the sides can't agree peacefully, Georgia would join NATO with a proviso: “The alliance’s obligations required by the fifth item of the basic treaty on collective security are spread only for territories where jurisdiction of the central authorities is really provided.” It means – beyond Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Therefore, NATO would take under control the rest of the Georgian territory without the recognition of independence of the former Georgian autonomies and formally considering them integral parts of the Georgian state. According to Mamradze, the project “is another stupid thing, as none of the NATO countries would agree to reconsider the fundamental fifth item of the NATO charter.”
