You're reading: NATO Secretary General’s representative: NATO presence in Georgia to increase

TBILISI - The North Atlantic alliance is planning to intensify cooperation with Georgia, James Appathurai, NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, who arrived in Tbilisi to take part in the International Defense and Security Conference, said.

The purpose of his visit to Tbilisi is participation in the Conference but meetings with the Georgian authorities prior to NATO’s Warsaw Summit are also planned, Appathurai told reporters on May 24.

NATO is planning to intensify cooperation with Georgia, which implies an increase in NATO’s presence there, he said.

Joint NATO military exercises are currently taking place in Georgia and the school for institutional development of the Georgian Defense Ministry will open in the near future, he said, adding that all of this is presentation of NATO’s offers to Georgia.

The defense ministers of various countries, representatives of NATO authorities and experts will participate in the International Defense and Security Conference which will take place in Tbilisi on May 24-26. In addition to Appathurai, United States Army Europe commander Ben Hodges and the defense ministers of the Baltic states have already arrived in Tbilisi.

At this moment the participants of the conference are present at the Vaziani military base near Tbilisi where the joint NATO Noble Partner 2016 demonstrative military exercises are being concluded. A total of 1,300 servicemen from Georgia, the U.S. and the UK and American military equipment – M1A2 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles – are participating in the exercises.