Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept.30 / Trend E. Tariverdiyeva /
A delegation of GUAM National Coordinators headed by its Secretary General will visit Washington to exchange views on the new two-year plan of cooperation between the Organization and the United States in coming months, GUAM Secretary General Valeri Chechelashvili said.
An agreement in this regard was reached as a result of the GUAM-U.S. Foreign Ministers' meeting, which took place Sept. 24 in New York.
"Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.S. Alexander Motsyk, who attended the meeting, is working with our embassies in order to coordinate with the State Department the exact date of our visit. I think the visit will take place in the first half of December," Chechelashvili told Trend over telephone from Kiev.
He said that the organization continues to work successfully, despite the criticism against GUAM by some observers.
"I take criticism against the organization in my stride, and I think it helps us better build the organization's work," Chechelashvili said. "Within the CIS and BSEC it is impossible to implement projects similar to those which are implemented by our organization, as well as to gain successes achieved by GUAM."
Chechelashvili that with other organizations it is impossible to create a free trade zone, as many member states of these structures are at war and do not have diplomatic relations.
In such conditions it is difficult to joint create projects to combat organized crime or establish a unified transit corridors such as have been successfully implemented within GUAM, Chechelashvili said.
"So much criticism, but we have continued successfully to work since since the creation of organization," he said
GUAM was established by post-Soviet countries in 1997 during the EU presidential summit in Strasbourg. Uzbekistan joined the organization in 1999 and left it after four years. A decision was made to announce GUAM as an international organization and give it a new name "Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM" at the first summit of the organization in Kiev in 2006.