"We are very troubled by the decisions and the rhetoric coming from a very small number of leaders of the Georgian Dream. It's clear 80 to 85 percent of the Georgian people want further integration to the EU and NATO," said US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Jim O'Brien at today's briefing.
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As he says, the recent actions of the Georgian government are incompatible with the country's desire to join NATO and the European Union.
"The government and we've seen the Prime Minister recently say that they anticipate their recent actions would not jeopardize that path.
We tried to be very clear, and I think the EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, said very clearly today that
These recent actions, the violence against opposition figures, the violence against civil society, the Moscow-based foreign agent law, the parent decision to award a new port to a Chinese company, all of these things are incompatible with wanting to join the US and EU-based international organizations.
So we're asking the government to reconsider its positions and we've noted that we'll continue reviewing our bilateral or multilateral engagements with the government.
It's really pretty simple, since we're in the period of the Euro football championships. Georgia said it wants to come and play in our football league. And they said, oh, but by the way, we want to have 15 players on our side of the field. And we said, no. You get the same number of players everybody else has, and you do these things that you want, you do them in the way everyone else does. That's the rules of the club.
So it's not really a decision about Georgia's sovereignty. Georgia, in its sovereign right, has decided to join the club. And we're just making clear what that means.
So we'll continue those discussions with the Georgian officials. In the meantime, our embassy is very active in communicating with them. A number of European leaders have been very active. And we'll continue those conversations as well, even as we head into the partnership events at the NATO summit. They are invited to the partnership events,” O'Brien said.
The Assistant Secretary of State confirmed that Georgia, like all NATO partner countries, will be invited to participate in partnership events.
