A meeting between the President of Georgia and the President of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Petros Efthymiou, was held in Batumi today. Mikheil Saakashvili and Petros Efthymiou spoke about the importance of existing cooperation between Georgia and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The focus of the meeting was the occupied territories, necessity of restoring the OSCE observer mission, and involvement of international observers in the Parliamentary elections process. The Head of State once again noted that Georgia is ready to host as many observers as possible, which will assist in holding transparent and democratic elections.
“I want to thank you very much for everything. We are expecting observers not only on the day of elections, but long term. This is very important for the Georgian democracy. We want as many of you to arrive as possible, and for you to share your advice with us on how we can better elections and make them more transparent, so that we do not let the people, who want to undermine democracy reach their goals. We want the process to be transparent and just and your involvement will have a lot of significance.” - noted Mikheil Saakashvili.
The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Petros Efthymiou, focused attention on the recent successes and reforms implemented in the country. He once again expressed readiness to cooperate with Georgia on behalf of OSCE in order to develop democratic institutions. The challenges from Russia as well as the unfulfilled obligations of Russia were among the important topics of discussion during the meeting. Petros Efthymiou once again expressed the uniform decision of OSCE that the observer mission of OSCE must be restored on the entire territory of Georgia.