Meetings and Discussions

   

Third Confidence -building Meeting of Russian and Georgian Experts in Istanbul

On March 6-8, 2014 the Georgian-Russian confidence-building meeting was held in Istanbul. This was the third and final meeting in the framework of the project “Experts in Search of Ways for Russian-Georgian Normalization”, funded by the British Embassy in Tbilisi.  

The overall objective of the project is to open an alternative opportunity of interaction between Georgia and Russia and through this contribute to finding solutions for the long term and sustainable peace. The project purpose is to make a sustainable effort to build a nucleus of the confidence oriented experts in both countries. 

The two-day meeting included several sessions. The project participants discussed the wide range of topics related to the Russian-Georgian relations including: new challenges in the conflict areas, Geneva talks, Abashidze-Karasin format, discourse about the meetings on the highest level, the impact of the Sochi Olympics on Russia-Georgia relations, Eastern Partnership and the “Association Agenda”, recent developments in Ukraine, the upcoming NATO Summit in UK, challenges and expectations viewed from Tbilisi.  

The final session of the two-day meeting was dedicated to the discussion of the opinion papers elaborated by the participants in the framework of the project.  Each author made a 10-minute presentation on the main ideas from the paper and responded to the questions from the audience.