Two days earlier NATO spokesman James Appathurai announced that the Alliance was forging ahead with plans for both Georgia's and Ukraine's full membership and that "assessments would be made at a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine and NATO-Georgia Commissions to be held in Brussels in early December at the level of NATO foreign ministers." [22]
Also on November 18 Georgian Vice Premier and State Minister for Euro-Atlantic Integration Giorgi Baramidze met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Brussels. "The Georgian delegation also included Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria and Deputy Defense Minister Nikoloz Vashakidze. A meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission at the ambassadorial level was also held in Brussels." [23]
The day preceding the meeting, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Tina Kaidanow were in Georgia to convene "working meetings with Georgian authorities within the Strategic Partnership Charter.
"The delegation will monitor the implementation of the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Plan" inaugurated in January of this year, less than four months after the war with Russia. [24]
The prior week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Western and allied nations of continuing to arm Georgia, stating � ���"I hope many take lessons from last year's August events. But I have to say that according to the reports of various sources, some countries are sending arms and ammunition demanded by the Georgian leadership via different complicated schemes.� �� � [25]
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin warned on the same day that "[Georgian] military drones have started flying over South Ossetia and Abkhazia" [26} and the day before Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, said "Georgia is getting large amounts of weapons supplied from abroad" and "Georgian military potential is currently higher than last August." [27]
Makarov's contention was confirmed by Georgian Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia on November 14 when he said "the country's defense capabilities are now better than they were a year ago and they are further improving."
The defense chief added, � ���"a strong army will be one of our key priorities until the last occupant leaves our territories.� �� � [28] The "occupants" in question are Russian troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Azerbaijan is not the only South Caucasus NATO partner preparing for war.
Regarding the recently concluded two-week Immediate Response 2009 exercises run by the U.S. Marine Corps in Georgia, a leading Russian news site wrote "Perhaps, the exercises were aimed at issuing a warning to Russia." [29]
On November 13 the Russian General Staff revealed that "Russian secret services have declassified information about Georgia's plans to start forming its special forces in a move that will be implemented in close cooperation with Turkey," and "voiced concern about Georgia's ongoing push for muscle-flexing amid efforts by Israel, Ukraine and NATO countries to re-arm the Saakashvili regime." [30]
In Ukraine, on November 19 Deputy Foreign Minister Kostiantyn Yeliseyev said of American ambassador to Georgia and ambassador designate to Ukraine John Tefft that "The U.S. Senate [Foreign Relations] Committee has approved his candidacy and we are expecting him to arrive soon." [31] In time for January's presidential election. Incumbent president and U.S. client Viktor Yushchenko is running dead last among serious candidates and his poll ratings are never higher than 3.5%. Tefft's task is to engineer some variant of the 2004 "Orange Revolution."
Yushchenko is a die-hard, intractable, unrelenting advocate of forcing his nation into NATO despite overwhelming popular opposition and for evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea.
On November 16 NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed High-Level NATO-Ukraine Consultations at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels and said:
"In 2008 at the Bucharest Summit NATO Heads of State and Government welcomed Ukraine's aspirations for membership in NATO and agreed that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance. To reflect this spirit of deepening cooperation, Ukraine has developed its first Annual National Programme which outlines the steps it intends to take to accelerate internal reform and alignment with Euro-Atlantic standards." [32]
The same day Reuters revealed that "Poland and Lithuania want to forge military cooperation with Ukraine to try to bring the former Soviet republic closer to NATO." Poland's Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski was quoted as saying of the initiative, "This reflects our support for Ukraine. We want to tie Ukraine closer to Western structures, including military ones." [33]
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