Georgia will not participate in the next 3+3 Caucasus platform meeting to be held in Turkey, the country’s Ambassador to Turkey George Janjgava said Monday.
“Georgia will definitely not attend the 3+3 meeting,” Janjgava told Daily Sabah.
Ankara has made frequent calls for a six-nation platform comprising of Turkey, Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia for permanent peace, stability and cooperation in the region, describing it as a win-win initiative for all regional actors in the Caucasus.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, on the sidelines of the recent Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Islamabad, said that Turkey hopes Georgia will also attend the upcoming meeting.
Janjgava underlined that Georgia sees both Turkey and Azerbaijan as “our strategic partners” and views Armenia as a "historical and good neighbor" in a neighborhood also home to Iran.
“But Russia is a country which is occupying 20% of Georgian territory,” the ambassador strongly emphasized.
Diplomatic ties between Russia and Georgia, which aspires to join the European Union and NATO, collapsed after Moscow occupied two of the latter's territories in a conflict and recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russian troops are now garrisoned. Most of the world, however, continues to consider them as part of Georgia.
Europe's top human rights court earlier last year found Russia responsible for a swath of violations in these regions after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that Russia exercised effective control over Georgia's separatist regions after the hostilities and that it was responsible for ill-treatment and acts of torture against Georgian prisoners of war, arbitrary detentions of the people, and "inhuman and degrading treatment” of 160 detained Georgian civilians, who were held in crowded confinement for more than two weeks in August 2008.
