Statement

March 30, 2007

Press Brief
Matthew J. Bryza, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs USAID Tbilisi

DAS Bryza: Thank you for coming today. I’m sorry that we’re a couple minutes late. But it’s been a typically crazy, packed schedule that I’m so honored to be able to have had the experience. We had the honor to meet with the President, the Speaker of Parliament, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Conflict Resolution, some opposition leaders – all the opposition leaders from the Parliament, Jean Arnault, and western Friends of the Secretary General of the United Nations for Georgia. And the Prosecutor General and some business leaders. So you can tell, we covered everything. Oh, and [we met with] the Minister of Education, Kakha Lomia. So I feel that I'm already beginning with, I hope, a pretty good base of knowledge of Georgia. I feel like I’ve just gone through a year of university and understand this place in ways that I hadn’t appreciated before [my arrival] yesterday.

So our major themes were, not in any particular order, the peaceful resolution of separatist conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On which the Georgian government has followed a constructive and, I would argue, a very effective approach in the past couple of months. The Georgian government’s response to the attack on Georgia of March 11 in the upper Kodori valley strengthened Georgia’s international position. The Georgian government demonstrated that it will not be provoked by an external attack on its sovereign territory. And thereby demonstrated its peaceful intentions and responsible leadership. We spent a fair amount of time as well talking about reform – meaning political reform and especially judicial reform. Georgia has done a remarkable job in reforms since November 2003. And, there’s still a long way to go, a very long way to go to fulfill the vision that’s been articulated by the political leadership of Georgia. And this is a vision that the leaders and the opposition share because these sorts of reforms are good and important for the people of Georgia. And such reforms are necessary to convince all members of the NATO alliance – all members must agree – to advance Georgia’s own aspirations to become a member of the alliance. As Georgia advances those reforms and advances the peaceful resolution of the conflicts, Georgia builds its case with all 26 NATO allies for Georgia to become a member of NATO.  All 26 members of the alliance have to agree to accept Georgia if Georgia is to become a NATO member, and no country outside of NATO has a right to veto Georgia’s progress towards NATO.  With the opposition and with the Speaker of Parliament today, we talked about the very positive development whereby all 160 members of Parliament voted in favor of Georgia’s NATO aspirations, which demonstrates a strong national consensus for Georgia’s future in the transatlantic family.

And finally, besides discussing the reforms in the judiciary, we also discussed reforms in the education sphere where Kakha Lomaia has really done some extraordinary things. We discussed our shared objectives; of Georgia, of the United States, our NATO allies in Southern and Southeastern Europe, and Azerbaijan, to help Europe strengthen its own energy security by expanding the production and flow of oil and natural gas through Georgia to Europe. President Aliev working with his friend and colleague President Saakashvili, when he decided that Azerbaijan would withstand threats and pressure of cutoffs of gas flow to Azerbaijan and would become dependent on itself, on Azerbaijan’s own gas, to take care of the needs of Azerbaijan’s consumers, of Georgia’s consumers, and of many of Europe's consumers.  Thank you for your patience, thank you for listening, and I’d be honored to take some of your questions.

Question: The first question is regarding the Georgian president’s new initiative regarding the administrative unit proposed for South Ossetia. The second question is regarding your meetings with the Prosecutor General and the Minister of Internal Affairs; have you given any specific recommendations?

DAS Byrza: I’m not familiar with the specifics of the proposal for a specific administrative entity in South Ossetia, but in my discussions with [President Saakashvili] and with all those people I mentioned before, what I learned is that the approach that they’re pursuing sounds exactly like the approach that we had discussed in our government with your leaders for the last few years; at least, it reflects our recommendations. Our recommendation has been for the government in Tbilisi to reach out to all people in South Ossetia and to use positive incentives, be they economic incentives, or cultural ones, political incentives or job creation, to attract South Ossetians back into a common Georgian home with all the other citizens of Georgia. So as far as I understand it, and maybe I don’t understand [this new initiative] entirely, the goal is to build contact between South Ossetians and other citizens of Georgia to the point that tensions reduce, people feel that they’re all together in one common political family, and then it’s possible to define and establish autonomy. I don’t know exactly what this new administrative unit in South Ossetia entails. It isn't my proposal.

When it comes to the meeting of the Prosecutor General and the Minister of Internal affairs, well, of course we talked about judicial reform. And we talked about a large number of steps that are being prepared in terms of laws that will hopefully begin moving through Parliament to reenergize the judicial reform process. And with the Ministry of Internal Affairs I, of course, expressed our government’s deepest condolences for the execution – for the terrorist act – committed against two officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This was a disgusting action that has no place in the environment that I described that I hope the Georgian government is trying to establish.

Question: The European Court of Human Rights had a look at the case of Georgia against Russia. As it has been said, this is not a friendly gesture, given the current climate between Georgia and Russia, what do you think, how appropriate now to start such a case and what’s your view on this?
 
DAS Bryza: I know that the deportation of the Georgians was an extremely unfriendly act when it happened. And an act that we have said and my superiors have said reflected not only a different decade but a different century. We encouraged the Georgian government to react calmly when all this was happening, even as we condemned these inhumane acts of deportation, of searching for Georgian children – school children – by name, looking for Georgian children who were identified and pulled out of schools…even though we found those actions to be deplorable, we encouraged the Georgian government to react in a calm and measured way. Some of our friends in Europe actually encouraged the Georgian government to take exactly this step: to go to the European Court of Human Rights and use existing legal mechanisms rather than political rhetoric or anger to address this grievous violation of human rights.

My understanding is that the court will accept such a case only if the plaintiffs involved have exhausted every legal remedy in the courts of the country where the event took place. Which means in that case that those individual people bringing the complaint had no other legal recourse, and [in the Georgian’s case] there was nothing else they could do, they were deported, there was nothing else that could be done except to bring this case before the European Court of Human Rights. If that’s the case, then I don’t believe [bringing this case to the European Court of Human Rights] is unfriendly at all. It’s the Georgian government defending the legal rights of its citizens through an established legal procedure. And the next step hopefully will be that the sanctions imposed against Georgia [by Russia] will be lifted and then Georgia will respond with a kind and positive gesture and we’ll see an action and reaction cycle that warms the relations between Georgia and Russia.

Question: Two weeks ago an official from the Pentagon made a statement about the deployment of anti missile systems in the Caucasus beside Europe, though he did not specify which countries this would be. Later, some officials noted that none of the South Caucasus countries received any proposals for this. Could you comment on this and how strong is the will of Washington to locate missile systems in the Caucasus? Second question is in Azerbaijan American experts are closely involved in one of Azerbaijan’s airport’s modernization, is this connected to the anti missile system?

DAS Bryza: Of course the United States is dedicated to the development of an anti missile system and our focus in on Poland and the Czech Republic. This is a system that is no threat to anyone. This is not a system that is directed against Russia, this is a system directed against unitary launches of missiles, predominantly from Iran. We’ve consulted with our NATO allies and Russia all the way through the process, from the beginning. And still today, we would welcome Russian participation in this effort to prove that, of course, this is not directed against Russia. I haven’t said anything about the Caucasus. Our focus is on the Czech Republic and Poland. When it comes to our military cooperation with Azerbaijan, we have very lively cooperation, very robust cooperation with Azerbaijan on security matters, and by the way, we have very strong cooperation with Armenia as well. And it goes without saying how grateful we are for the security cooperation with Georgia, with Georgia just offering a brigade to be sent to Iraq where its 856 soldiers are already performing with great distinction. We have many, many airplanes that fly over Azerbaijan and Georgia on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan and, if there’s an emergency, we want those aircraft to be ready, to be safe. Thank you.

Question: Because of it’s geopolitical location, Georgia is threatened by Iran and Russia and when the news about the missile defense system was made public the Abkhaz leadership asked the Russians to deploy the same type of anti missile equipment on their territory. Georgia is in a rather dangerous zone in terms of its location and could be threatened by Iran. Is it considered to be a key factor the U.S. relationship with Georgia? Will it be helpful for Georgia to access the Euro-Atlantic structures or may it hinder and obstruct the implementation of energy projects?

DAS Bryza: Georgia matters to us because of what’s happening inside of Georgia, not because of Iran and not because of Russia. Yes the energy projects are very important to us, of course they are. They’re important inside of Georgia to help Georgia obtain energy independence. Our security cooperation is important in the form of our soldiers helping to train and equip Georgian counterparts who serve with us in Iraq and elsewhere. And Georgia’s market economic and democratic transformation is of great value to the United States because it reflects our county’s view that true stability comes from political and economic freedom. And on missile defense, as I said, we’re not talking about the Caucasus; we’re talking about Poland and the Czech Republic. For a system that can defend us and our friends and allies against an errant launch of a nuclear missile. Russia already has a missile defense system deployed around Moscow to defend Moscow. We have nothing. I presume that the great scientists of Russia have designed a system that is effective and is enough so that Moscow doesn’t have to worry about putting a system in Abkhazia.

Question: My question is concerning the OSCE meeting connected to the Karabakh issue and I’d like to ask you questions about personnel changes to take place in Armenia next on the Karabakh issue.

DAS Bryza: First of all I’ve just traveled to Yerevan to express President Bush’s condolences for the death of Prime Minister Margarian. It was a very sad day. He was a great partner. Armenia now is experiencing some political challenges, not only the death of this wonderful man, the Prime Minister, who was very popular, but also the parliamentary election on May 12. So it’s important to keep the Nagorno-Karabakh process moving forward, as I personally believe President Aliyev, Foreign Minister Mammadyarov, President Kocharian and Foreign Minister Oskanian are all committed to doing. With those leaders in place I fully anticipate the process will keep moving forward, the ministers and the presidents will continue what they’ve been doing, which is narrowing their differences. And I would hope and anticipate that after Armenia’s elections on May12 the whole process will move more quickly.

Question: Do you have any recommendation or proposals for how to deal with the Karabakh issue?

DAS Bryza: There are very constructive proposals already on the negotiating table, the so-called basic principles of the Co-Chairs. And the foreign ministers and the presidents have done what the co-chairs have asked them to do last June, where we said, “take these principles, these proposals, and improve them”. So each side, the Azerbaijani side and the Armenian side, has some specific suggestions of how to improve those basic principles and we have a very active discussion going on about them right now. So my recommendation, and I don’t want to get into the details because that would kill the discussion at this point, but in general, what I would recommend is that on the Azerbaijani side, Azerbaijan signals its readiness to give the Armenians time to work through its election but still keep the process moving forward through these discussions and that the Armenia side send clear signals that when the Parliamentary election finishes, that the very highest level of leadership of Armenia will be ready to engage in an active way. And I have to say that I felt that [this was the case with the Armenian leadership] when I was in Yerevan two days ago.

Question: On the March 5, an intergovernmental agreement to build the Burgas Alexandropolis oil pipeline was signed among Russia, Bulgaria and Greece. This project, if implemented, will be controlled by Russia. What are the possible implications for oil development in the Caspian and for the supply of Caspian gas to the EU?

DAS Bryza: I’m smiling because it’s always nice to get a question about energy from the Vashakmadze family. I first heard about Burgas-Alexandropolis pipeline when I was working with Gogi Vashakmadze on the realization of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [pipeline]. And at that time, many people wondered whether the idea of the Burgas-Alexandropolis pipeline would block the BTC. It didn’t because it couldn’t, beecause the BTC pipeline made supreme commercial sense. And so, from our perspective, it’s fine that Burgas-Alexadropolis is realized because there’s plenty of diversification thanks to Baku-Supsa, and the BTC pipelines. And I assume that our NATO allies in the governments of Greece and Bulgaria are significantly clever enough to make sure that they maintain as much control over their strategic assets as they need to. When if comes to gas exports from Azerbaijan to Europe, like with the BTC, I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to stop this from happening. Beginning right now, Shah-Deniz gas is moving across Azerbaijan and Georgia, into Turkey, and will make its way to Greece this summer; more and more of that gas moving to Greece because that makes supreme commercial sense.

Question: After your meeting with the members of the parliamentary opposition, what are your views about the situation of democracy in Georgia? How well-grounded and how convincing were the opposition members in portraying their concerns regarding the situation with democracy in Georgia? And, what is the position of the American side regarding democracy? If there are any problems, is it due to a lack of political will or bad strategies?

DAS Bryza: First I’d like to note that our meeting yesterday with these opposition leaders was nothing out of the ordinary. Ambassador Tefft and his team meet regularly with opposition leaders here. I do as well at home, I get called up to Congress all the time to talk with opposition members of the U.S. Congress. Two main messages yesterday: one, as I mentioned before, was absolutely unified support for Georgia’s NATO ambition. Two, very positive and mostly thoughtful, constructive and, I would say, fair criticisms of many aspects of Georgian society, which is what a loyal opposition is supposed to do, including democratic reform and judicial reform. As you know, [these issues] are the subject of the debate you hear every day. There are concerns about property rights, an independent judiciary, and passage of the criminal procedural code, all of those main issues that are at the center of the domestic political debate here in Georgia. But I do sense from all my discussions, beginning with all the people from the opposition to all the people in the executive branch with whom I met in the last couple of days, recognition, that it’s important to keep those reforms moving and prepare the legislation necessary to implement all of these reforms. There’s a sense, not of urgency, but a sense of the need to keep moving and we share that sense. Democratic reform is like a living being. You have to take care of it. You have to feed it and provide it water, and keep it warm, teach it and guide it and make sure it’s healthy. There have been remarkable successes and there is a long way to go.

Question: Are you aware of the American Citizen who crossed the border and was arrested by Georgian authorities?

DAS Bryza: I’m very glad you asked that. First of all, yes, I’m aware of the case. Our consular officer has visited him. He’s fine. Beyond that, all we can ask is that due process be carried out under the rule of law. [This case] does show why it its so important to resolve the separatist conflicts such that Georgia has its sovereign right to exercise control over its borders, because that is Georgia’s border between the Russian Federation and Abkhazia.

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