TBILISI. Dec 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The negotiations between the Georgian leadership and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dealt with mutually-related subjects - the combat against terrorism and the improvement of Georgia's security, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said in an interview with the national radio on Monday.
It will be easier to solve these problems after the U.S. lifts restrictions on rendering military aid to former Soviet republics, he said.
Shevardnadze said he had "very thoroughly" discussed the reforming of the Georgian army with the Pentagon chief, who promised that a high-ranking delegation from the U.S. Defense Department would shortly arrive in Tbilisi to work out, together with Georgian specialists, the second phase of reforming the country's armed forces.
The president also touched upon "the Abkhaz issue" at the meeting with Rumsfeld. "The American side completely shares Georgia's position that it is necessary to fight not only terrorism, including international terrorism, but in the first instance sources and arteries feeding it, which are aggressive nationalism, xenophobia, ethnic and religious intransigence, and aggressive separatism," the president said.