GEORGIA…

Fresh from a successful trip to Washington for NATO’s fiftieth anniversary, and to Strasbourg to celebrate his country’s accession to the Council of Europe, Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze told a Tbilisi audience that full membership in NATO is Georgia’s goal. “We have a long path to travel before we can join NATO,” he said, but “it may happen sooner than we imagine.” He endorsed NATO’s objectives and tactics in Yugoslavia, adding that President Clinton had told him ethnic cleansing is just as objectionable in Abkhazia (where thousands of ethnic Georgians have been driven from their homes) as in Kosovo.