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NATO chief, ambassadors to visit Georgian city

Georgia Materials 13 September 2008 01:56 (UTC +04:00)

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Friday he and 26 NATO state ambassadors will next week visit the Georgian city of Gori, occupied briefly last month by Russian forces, reported Georgian Daily.

"We'll pay a visit to Gori to show support for Georgia after what we've seen from the Russian side," Scheffer said at a joint press conference here with Latvian President Valdis Zatlers.

Russian troops occupied Gori in August after forcing back Georgian forces that launched an offensive on August 7 to retake the nearby province of South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Days later Russian forces withdrew from the city, just 60 kilometers (38 miles) east of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

"I'll visit Georgia in the coming Monday and Tuesday with all 26 NATO ambassadors. We'll speak to government. We'll speak to the opposition. We'll speak to the non-government organizations," Scheffer told reporters.

A new NATO-Georgia Commission set up after the former Soviet republic's clash with Russia will meet for the first time next week in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, an alliance spokesman announced Thursday in Brussels.

Friday's talks in Riga were attended by the NATO secretary general and foreign ministers from the Baltic NATO states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

There has been growing concern in the Baltics about Russia's actions in Georgia.

The discussions focused on NATO's collective defence guarantees.

"Members of NATO states are confident Article 5 works," Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said following the talks, referring to the article in the alliance's treaty addressing collective defence.

"In this context NATO's visibility in Estonia has importance. Today we see it in the form of the airspace guarding operation. There should be more such elements in the future," he said.

NATO states are engaged in joint-patrols of Baltic-member airspace.

All three ex-Soviet republics border Russia. After breaking free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1990-91, they joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, despite Moscow's vehement opposition.

The three Baltic states, plus Poland, have been among the staunchest and most vocal allies of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili since Russian troops entered the former Soviet republic last month.

Scheffer also observed NATO naval exercises while in Latvia.

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