The United States and Georgia on Friday signed a strategic partnership pact aimed at deepening the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of defense and security.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and visiting Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze signed the Charter on Strategic Partnership in Washington on Friday.
"This Charter underscores our relationship and our cooperation in defense, trade, energy security, strengthening democratic institutions, people-to-people contacts, and cultural exchanges," said Rice at the signing ceremony.
"The United States supports and will always support Georgia's sovereignty and its territorial integrity, as well as its Euro-Atlantic aspirations and its integration into the institutions of the Euro-Atlantic," she added.
Meanwhile, the Georgian Foreign Minister said that signing of the accord marks a historic moment for her country, adding that the agreement "is something Georgian nation has been aspiring to and this is the stepping stone which will bring Georgia to Euro-Atlantic structures, to membership within NATO, and to return to family of Western and civilized nations."
The agreement signed Friday is similar to a strategic agreement Washington has recently signed with Ukraine, and it comes five months after the Georgia-Russia war over South Ossetia in August.
The two former Soviet countries were locked in a five-day war in August after Russia responded aggressively to a Georgian move to bring about constitutional order in the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.
The Russian offensive drove away the Georgian troops from the area and Moscow took control over South Ossetia and another Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia, and formally recognized the independence of the two breakaway regions.
The accord is bound to escalate tensions between U.S. and Russia as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had said earlier that such a partnership with the U.S. would make Georgia strong enough to pursue its ambitions of restoring its territorial integrity in the breakaway regions.
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