Lukashenka called Saakashvili’s relative
- 24.08.2010, 9:06
The Georgian media continue to tell about Moscow-Minsk conflict.
Tbilisi hopes to gain long-term profit from the conflict and establish certain relations with Belarus. What is the most interesting, Georgia sets serious sights on military and technical cooperation with Lukashenka, Georgia Times writes.
The relations between Minsk and Tbilisi during the last five years cannot be called stable. In 2005, Alyaksandr Lukashenka made a decision to impose a visa regime with Georgia. The Belarusian ruler explained his decisive step with a necessity to counter the organized and transnational crime. A known fact, at those times the Georgian criminal world actively used Belarus as a channel to enter Russia.
In 2007, Georgia expressed a desire to become friends with Belarus. Mikheil Saakashvili sent his associate Vano Merabishvili, the interior minister, to Belarus in hopes to gain real profit from this cooperation in two or three years. Alyaksandr Lukashenka was intent on setting economic ties with Tbilisi and promised to reach a $100-million trade turnover. “We are full of determination to resume and multiply our relations, to make them even more intensive that they were in the Soviet times,” he said.
No progress has been made. The only things the parties achieved were a ratification of the agreement on international transport connection and some statements on a necessity to develop economic ties.
Now Tbilisi decided to deal with Lukashenka more closely. The difficulties in Moscow-Minsk relations were absolutized, and the Belarusian ruler was called a mental relative of Mikheil Saakashvili. Georgian masters of word notice the signs of the turnover development and hope Belarus can become a new wine, mineral water, and citrus fruit market. This is clear enough, after Georgia had quitted from the CIS and lost the Russian market, the volume of the country’s export decreased.
Local politologists start talking about friendship between Tbilisi and Minsk. As said by Tornike Sharashinidze, professor of the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs and former director of Information Center on NATO at the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, both Belarus and Georgia have the only way, a way to Europe. “Georgia has some problems. Belarus has problems as well. But both Georgia and Belarus look in the same direction,” Caucasian Information Portal quotes him.
Moreover, the Georgian media seriously suppose the rather poor ties between Belarus and Georgia can extend to military cooperation in course of time. They think Minsk will supply air defense weapons to Tbilisi and it is “confrontation with Moscow” that will make Lukashenka remove certain obstacles and start military cooperation with Georgia.