Russia-Georgia official dialogue to continue in Prague

Another, fourth, meeting of Georgia’s Prime Minister’s Envoy on resuming relations with the Russian Federation Zurab Abashidze will have a meeting with his counterpart, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin in early December in Prague, the Georgian official told reporters on Friday. The first meeting took place on December 14, 2012 near Geneva, and the following three meetings were organized in Prague - on March 1, June 5 and September 19 of the current year. The Abashidze-Karasin negotiations are the first direct dialogue between the two countries’ officials (without mediators) after the events of 2008. Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said “the meetings between Abashidze and Karasin are playing a positive role in the process of bringing to normal the relations between the two counties.” In late September, Abashidze said “from the very beginning of this bilateral format of the Georgia-Russia dialogue we have agreed that at the current stage we will not discuss topics, where progress is impossible.” At the same time, he continued, the two countries had been discussing rather productively “the issues of restoration and development of the trade, economic, transport, humanitarian and cultural relations between the two countries, and much progress has been achieved in those directions.”