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Georgian prime minister says he is ready for talks with Russian leadership

On December 18 President Putin said at his long news conference that Russia would be glad to see any representative of the Georgian leadership

Irakli Garibashvili EPA/ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE

Irakli Garibashvili

© EPA/ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE

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Moscow will be happy to welcome Georgia's president, PM — Putin

TBILISI, December 26. /TASS/. The Georgian prime minister is prepared to meet the Russian leadership, he told a news conference in Tbilisi on Friday. Nevertheless, thorough preparations for the such a meeting should be made yet. "It should be planned and organized very well to yield result," the prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, declared.

"It is too early to say yet when such a meeting might take place and which format it would be held in," he said.

On Friday, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council Irina Imerlishvili confirmed that Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili was prepared to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss "only key, problematic aspects in bilateral relations", as she put it. She narrowed "the key problematic aspects" to the situation in respect to South Ossetia and Abkhazia and an Agreement on strategic partnership and the relations of allies that Russia and Abkhazia signed on November 24.

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"If other subjects are raised they might be discussed in the Geneva format in which representatives of Russia and Georgia discuss other political problems," Imerlishvili said.

On December 18 President Putin said at his long news conference that Russia would be glad to see any representative of the Georgian leadership, the Georgian president and prime minister in Moscow if the Georgian leadership thought it possible. After Russia had recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia the situation in the relations with Tbilisi worsened, Putin admitted. "Frankly speaking, it is very difficult," Putin added.

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