"We are not planning to station our military units in the former army bases. Akhalkalaki will be the only exception. But then, it will not be a base. We are drafting an employment program for Georgian nationals presently on the personnel of that Russian army base," Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili said.
According to the latest information RIA Novosti received from the ministry, the first train started from the Batumi base today to remove a part of its military hardware in compliance with agreements made in Moscow. The removal had been duly coordinated with the host country, said a spokesman for the Georgian Defense Ministry.
According to Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili, a new stage is taking start in Georgian-Russian relations.
"This is an end of Russia's 200-year long military presence in Georgia. It ushers in a new partnership stage," she said at a news conference today.
According to the foreign minister, Georgia is offering to Russia a new pattern of cooperation, in particular, of the anti-terror alliance. It all has found reflection in the document signed in Moscow quite recently.
"An anti-terror center will be set up to use a minor part of the Batumi military base. As for the Akhalkalaki base, it will be closed down," said Zurabishvili.
As the foreign minister explained, the signatures of the two countries' presidents were not obligatory to judicially formalize the instrument on base pullout.
"The foreign ministers of Georgia and Russia signed the document to gain time."
Russia and Georgia are intending to sign a framework treaty on friendship and good-neighborly cooperation. "The work on that treaty was problem-laden in the absence of a treaty on the bases," she said.
As the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) was holding summitry in Istanbul in 1999, Russia pledged to pull out all its military projects from Georgia. Two army bases, the 137th base in Vaziani, close to Tbilisi, and the 50th base in Gudauta, (Abkhazia), were pulled out in 2000. The two remaining, the 62nd base, in Akhalkalaki (the Samtskhe-Javakheti area) and the 12th base, in Batumi (Adzharia) became object of long bilateral foreign-ministerial consultations.
