On February 27, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili visited Azerbaijan. It was not surprising that her first regional trip was to Baku considering Azerbaijan is the largest foreign investor in Georgia, and the two countries are linked by important regional oil and gas pipelines as well as the new Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad. The visit of the Georgian president was followed closely throughout the region, because the close relations between the two South Caucasus states seemed to have come under some pressure lately. In this respect, the results of the visit and statements by the Georgian President in Baku should also serve as a reflection of the current state of relations between neighboring countries.
Three weeks earlier, a memorial to an Armenian soldier who fought Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war was inaugurated in Akhalkalaki, a predominantly Armenian-populated Georgian region. In Baku, this incident caused so much indignation that the Azerbaijani ambassador in Tbilisi handed the Georgian Foreign Ministry a protest note.
In addition, at the end of January, it was announced that SOCAR, the state-owned oil and gas company of Azerbaijan, which is Georgia's largest gas supplier, will increase gas prices for commercial customers to 95 tetris per cubic meter from March 2019 on, which would constitute a price increase of about 10%. According to the company, the reasons are "the change in the price of the Georgian national currency against the US dollar and the distribution rate". Two weeks later, on 13 February, Georgia's Minister for Economic Affairs and Sustainable Development, Georgi Kobuliya, said Georgia would not rule out the possibility of buying natural gas from Russia. According to Kobuliya, the purchase of Russian gas would strengthen Georgia's energy independence.
The experts did not rule out that this could be part of the Georgian negotiating strategy to pressure Azerbaijan and bring about a price reduction. However, the Georgian opposition led by former President Mikheil Saakashvili strongly criticized these plans of the government. The ex-president accused the government of a pro-Russian policy, recalling that in 2006, Russia interrupted gas supplies to Georgia "in the middle of winter", while Azerbaijan, on the contrary, has always reliably supplied the country with gas. In addition, the Azerbaijani gas is 20% cheaper than the Russian, said Saakashvili.
In Baku, the issue of Azerbaijani gas was not discussed, at least not in public statements by Salome Zourabichvili and her counterpart Ilham Aliyev. Instead, the Georgian president declared that she had decided to resume the work of the joint Georgian-Azerbaijani Border Committee. On the basis of the friendly relations between Georgia and Azerbaijan, the countries should definitively define their common border, said Zourabichvili. About a third of the Georgian-Azerbaijani border is not yet defined. At the talks in Baku, they had agreed to resolve this issue by the end of 2019.
In Baku, Salome Zourabichvili also said that the territorial integrity of Georgia and Azerbaijan has still not been restored. "The occupation still remains a painful wound for us. This bothers our development, but despite these tragedies we have been able to strengthen our statehood and economy", said the Georgian president. That this statement is poorly received in Armenia should have been anticipated by the professional diplomat Zourabichvili. On February 19, the foreign ministers from the separatist republics of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, which are not recognized or only partially recognized internationally, signed a cooperation agreement in Tskhinvali. Moreover, Tbilisi should not have forgotten that Armenia was one of the 16 countries that voted against the resolution of the UN General Assembly on the situation of IDPs from Abkhazia and South Ossetiain in July 2018.
However, Salome Surabishvili will make her next visit to Armenia. The Georgian Embassy in Yerevan told the news agency "Novosti-Armenia" that the Georgian President's visit to the Armenian capital is expected to be in March.
