Presentations

   

Presentation of the Georgian and Russian Expert Publication

On November 11, 2011 GFSIS hosted a public presentation of the new publication prepared within the project “Second Track-Russian and Georgian Experts Building Confidence.”  The opening remarks were made by Alexander Rondeli, President of GFSIS and Boris Iaroshevitch, Acting Head of EU Delegation in Georgia, who stressed the importance of supporting the confidence building measures and underlined the EU determination to contribute to the stability in the region.  

Kakha Gogolashvili, the Project Director, gave a brief overview of the project and the purpose and the content of the publication. He outlined the Policy Recommendation Papers prepared by the Russian authors who could not attend the presentation.  Four out of five Georgian authors shared their opinion and views on the publication and the whole project.  The scope of the event allowed all attendees comprised of key Georgian experts involved in conflict resolution, representatives of academia, the Government, the Parliament, NGO and think tanks, international organizations and the EU member states’ embassies to take part in the discussions.  The Ambassadors of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany have expressed their opinion stressing the need to support similar initiatives. Representatives of different think-tanks have also made statements and positively evaluated the idea of encouraging expert collaboration and producing joint publications.  Furthermore, the need to establish similar dialogue in specific fields and areas of cooperation and mutual concern was also brought up.   One of the contributors to the discussion was the chairman of the Supreme Council of Abkhazia, highlighting his support toward similar endeavors and sharing interesting thoughts about improving the Russian-Georgian relations.  One of his suggestions was to engage Internally Displaced Persons from Abkhazia in similar projects in the future.