Tuvalu re-establishes ties with Georgia

Transcript

Tuvalu's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taukelina Finikaso, says the country risked isolating itself when the previous government set up diplomatic ties with Russia.

In 2011, the government decided to recognise Georgia's two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, siding with Russia.

That's now been retracted and the foreign minister recently travelled to Georgia to sign a formal agreement.

Taukelina Finikaso told Bridget Tunnicliffe re-establishing diplomatic relations with Georgia is an important step towards strengthening ties with traditional friends.

Taukelina Finikaso : Georgia is working towards becoming one of the EU members and we have very strong bonds with the EU and we have been consistently assisted by the EU over the years, and we feel that the decision was a wrong decision made by the previous government in going the other way around and that's left our traditional donor partners like the EU and of course Georgia.   

Bridget Tunnicliffe : Did it put you in possibly a difficult position when there are only a handful of other countries in the world that recognise those break-away states. Was that a concern that possibly you were isolating yourself into a group of countries?

TF : Exactly, that's one of the other concerns that we had. As you mentioned I think we were one of the five countries that recognised the break away states, and from the Pacific I think there was three of us, together with Vanuatu and Nauru, so we were heading towards isolation and it is not something that we really want to face up with, as we have always been with the like-minded states, as in the EU and being a Commonwealth member also, we would like to keep with all the traditional friends and the members of organisations that we have been with since we started.

BT : So, you've formally established diplomatic relations, what does that sort of entail?

TF : Well we are just happy that we are back again. We had a drop in our assistance from the EU for this coming cycle and we sincerely hope that once we get back to where we were before that we would hopefully get some more assistance from the EU.

BT : So you think that drop in assistance from the EU was a direct result of Tuvalu recognising those break away states.

TF : That's what we think but we do not have any sort of confirmation on it. It's just a thought that we had, that it might have some ties to this.

BT : So you've established diplomatic relations with Georgia. Does that include an agreement for donor funds from Georgia to Tuvalu?

TF : Yes, we also signed a memorandum of understanding on which we could further deepen our relationship by Georgia helping us in certain projects that we may come up with and submit to them for their fundings. Vice versa if they need our assistance in the UN we will be looking at that sort of understanding that at least both countries to benefit from working together.