Georgia to take part in financing expenses of bases’ pullout-FM
By Ksenia Kaminskaya and Tamara Frolkina

ITAR-TASS News Agency
May 30, 2005 Monday 1:06 PM Eastern Time

MOSCOW, May 30 — Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili said
Tbilisi would take part in financing the expenses of the withdrawal
of the Russian bases from Akhalkalaki and Batumi.

At the same time, Zurabishvili stressed, “Georgia and Russia intend
to address their partners in order to search for additional funding
for this purpose.”

The Georgian minister said on Monday, “This is not an obligatory
condition for fulfilling obligations. The major part of hardware will
be drawn out to Russia.”

However, she did not rule out that the part of hardware “will be
redeployed to other places, for example to Armenia.” In her words,
“We’ll do our best to draw out the major part of hardware to Russia.”

“Georgia isn’t interested in deploying military forces in its territory
and in Caucasian countries adjacent to it,” Zurabishvili pointed out.