Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said that his country is successfully redirecting its economy away from Russia and turning toward the West, the Associated Press news agency reported December 13.

The prime minister had a public speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington Wednesday. Nogaideli told the audience about the basic tendency of Georgian economic today. In the face of troubled relations with Russia, Georgia would continue to look toward the West.

Georgia already had weathered the economic impact of Russia’s policies he said. The country had moved rapidly to improve energy efficiency, already was meeting its electricity needs and expected to reduce Russia’s share of Georgia’s natural gas supply from 100 percent now to under 20 percent within 30 days through new non-Russian contracts.

Even as Russia responded to recent political friction with economic sanctions and threatened to cut off supplies of natural gas in the midst of winter, Georgia expects to meet its energy needs through a deal with Azerbaijan and is looking to new markets for its exports, Nogaideli said.

“There is no crisis any longer,” he added.

Georgia’s relations with Russia soured after Georgia’s brief detention of four purported Russian spies in September. The ties got strain as Russia supported two breakaway regions of Georgia.

Russia’s state gas monopoly, OAO Gazprom, has said it plans to charge Georgia $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, compared with the $110 that it pays now. Gazprom also warned it would cut off supplies by January 1 if a contract had not been signed.

Nogaideli has rejected the demand as “political blackmail” and has sought urgently to find a new supplier. He warned Wednesday that the Caucasus region needed to be wary of Russian energy monopolies. “Multiple supplies of energy and dynamic competition, that`s what we need,” he said.

Georgia also was looking to find new export markets in Europe, the United States and in neighboring Turkey, with which it hopes to reach a free trade agreement in coming months.

Nogaideli said Georgia is looking forward to join NATO and to become fully integrated in the Euro-Atlantic institutions. At the recent NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed support for eventual Georgian membership of the military alliance.

“We really hope and expect that when the next enlargement takes place, Georgia is in,” Nogaideli said.

Nogaideli said that his country would need support from the West to continue reforming its institutions. The democratic transformation in our part of the world is very important and any democratization in Georgia needs to be supported to the maximum level possible, he added.

Nogaideli is a strong ally of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who came to power during the “Rose Revolution,” when protesters stormed parliament and drove out President Eduard Shevardnadze, the last foreign minister of the defunct Soviet Union.

Popularity: 1% [?]