Jakarta, Indonesia, hosts the 44th General Assembly of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly; the Parliamentary Delegation, headed by the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Nikoloz Samkharadze attends the event.

A couple of months ago, AIPA granted the status of the observer to the Georgian Parliament and it is the first General Assembly that the Parliamentary Delegation attends with this status.

Samkharadze addressed up to 500 delegates and thanked the Assembly members for the observer status. As he highlighted, this decision will highly facilitate Georgia to develop common interests with South-East Asian countries in the economic, cultural and other directions. He underlined the strategic location of Georgia, and recent reforms in our country and expressed his commitment to sharing this experience with the region countries. He dwelt on the Russian aggression in Ukraine noting that 15 years ago, Russia similarly invaded Georgia and this war resulted in 20% of our territory still being occupied by Russia.

He emphasized the importance of the support of the South-East Asian countries to the territorial integrity of Georgia and called on the Assembly members to ratify the resolutions initiated by Georgia in the UN.

The visit includes the dialogue of the Parliamentary Delegation in an extended format – with the representatives of the AIPA member Parliaments; as well as bilateral meetings with the AIPA Secretary General and the Parliamentary Delegations. AIPA member states are: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, and Myanmar; while the AIPA observer status is granted to the EU, USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, China, Russia, Australia, Norway, Azerbaijan and Ukraine.

The Parliamentary Delegation is composed of the Chief of the Speaker’s Cabinet, Levan Makhashvili and the Secretary of the Parliamentary Delegation to ASEAN AIPA, Irakli Brokishvili.