NATO drills in Georgia do not help bolstering intl, regional security - Sukhum
SUKHUM. Nov 20 (Interfax) - The Abkhaz Foreign Ministry views the conduct of the NATO-Georgia 2016 command and staff drills as a direct threat to security of this country.
"Abkhazia has repeatedly made sure that military-political cooperation between Georgia and its western partners is exclusively aimed at implementation of Georgian leadership's revanchist aspirations," the Abkhaz foreign political agency said in a statement released on Sunday.
The republican Foreign Ministry noted that "given multi-year and extremely negative experience of cooperation with Georgia, it is difficult to believe that such military activity in the zones of unsettled Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-South Ossetian armed conflicts can make a contribution into the cause of strengthening international and regional security, as Tbilisi declares this."
"The Abkhaz side has been repeatedly convinced that the Georgian leadership's statements regarding the absence of any military-political threats from the conduct of such joint exercises cannot serve as a guarantee of security and stability in the region," the foreign political agency said.
Sukhum calls as "an apparent evidence of revanchist sentiments in Georgia, regardless what political force is in power - the 2008 war, which Georgia has unleashed with complete connivance of its western partners, who had upgraded, equipped and rearmed the Georgian army."
The republican Foreign Ministry said that "for the purposes of a symmetrical and adequate response to such development of the situation in the region, the Abkhaz side intends to develop and boost its military and strategic partnership with Russia, which acts as the only reliable ally for Abkhazia."
Besides, "the Abkhaz Foreign Ministry is set during the forthcoming visit by the co-chairs of the Geneva discussions to Sukhum to focus on NATO's intensification in Georgia and initiate the discussion on this issue at the upcoming round the Geneva discussions on security and stability in Transcaucasia," the document said.
The NATO-Georgia 2016 command and staff military exercises ended in Tbilisi on November 20. The drills were held at the Training and Evaluation Joint Center (JTEC) on the premises of the Krtsanisi Center for the support to the drills and military education. Over 250 servicemen from 13 countries took part in the drills.