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Armenia, Georgia Announce ‘Strategic Partnership’


Georgia - Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili (R) and his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinian meet in Tbilisi, January 26, 2024.
Georgia - Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili (R) and his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinian meet in Tbilisi, January 26, 2024.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his Georgian counterpart Irakli Gharibashvili signed a joint declaration calling for “strategic partnership” between their countries as they held talks in Tbilisi on Friday.

They described the declaration as historic. It was not immediately made public.

“De facto, we were already strategic partners and friends,” Gharibashvili told a joint news briefing. “It can be said that this reality was formalized today.”

“This achievement is the result of several years of joint work and reflects our commonalities and intentions,” Pashinian said for his part.

The Armenian premier listed more than a dozen areas where Armenia and Georgia will strive for closer ties. Defense and security was not among them.

The declaration was signed at the end of a session of a Georgian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. Both Pashinian and Gharibashvili spoke of growing commercial ties between the two neighboring states, saying their bilateral trade surpassed $1 billion last year.

Armenian government data shows, however, that Georgian-Armenian trade stood at just $239 million in January-November 2023, down by more than 13 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Pashinian said he also briefed Gharibashvili on Armenia’s peace talks with Azerbaijan. He said he hopes that the peace process will resume “on a full scale” after next month’s Azerbaijani presidential election.

“I want to express our hope that Armenia and Azerbaijan will sign a peace treaty soon,” Gharibashvili said in this regard.

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