GEORGIA ADMITTED TO THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously voted yesterday to admit Georgia as a full member of the Council of Europe (CE). Under CE rules, PACE’s vote is the final step in a lengthy admission procedure. The decision is being forwarded to the CE’s Committee of Ministers for execution. Georgia is the first country of the South Caucasus to meet the CE’s membership criteria. Addressing yesterday’s session in Strasbourg, Georgian Parliament Chairman Zurab Zhvania expressed the hope that Azerbaijan and Armenia would also progress toward meeting membership criteria, and thus enhance cooperation among the region’s countries.

PACE attached certain conditions in granting Georgia membership. Georgia must meet these conditions within three to five years. They include completion of judicial reform, efforts to curb corruption, political settlements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and repatriation of Meskhetian Turks to their homes in southern Georgia. The CE and its Georgia rapporteurs did recognize that fulfillment of some of the conditions does not depend on the central government alone.

In Tbilisi, President Eduard Shevardnadze hailed “Georgia’s entry into the family of European nations.” He anticipated that membership in the CE would “help solve the problems bequeathed by the fratricidal conflicts.” Shevardnadze remarked that admission to the CE reflects both democratic progress in Georgia and the country’s “increasing significance as a geopolitical factor.” Shevardnadze’s foreign policy adviser, Shalva Pichkhadze, expressed the hope that CE membership would pave Georgia’s way toward closer relations with the European Union and with NATO (Prime-News, Radio Tbilisi, January 27).

SIRADEGHIAN, CITING HISTORY, URGES CHANGE IN FOREIGN POLICY.