Tbilisi seeks advice of European partners before talks with Karasin
TBILISI. Feb 24 (Interfax) - Georgian Foreign Minister Tamar Beruchashvili and Special Representative of the Georgian Prime Minister for Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze flew to Brussels on Tuesday for consultations ahead of Abashidze's meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin in Prague on February 26.
"The Abashidze-Karasin meeting will be held after a long break and traditional economic, commercial and humanitarian issues will be highlighted. This time the meeting will be dedicated to the treaty Georgia and Russia concluded in 2011 during Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization," Beruchashvili told reporters at the Tbilisi airport.
"We could do with consultations with European partners" before meeting with Karasin, Abashidze told reporters.
He said several days ago that the main issue on the agenda of the Prague meeting with Karasin would be the implementation of the Georgian-Russian agreement on customs administering and trade turnover monitoring.
The agreement committed Georgia and Russia to elaborate a mechanism of international monitoring and electronic data exchange. The Swiss company SGS was tasked to monitor goods flows across the Russian-Georgian border, including in the Abkhazian and South Ossetian sectors. A contract with that company has yet to be signed.