ArmInfo. Tehgiz Pkhaladze, the Foreign Relations Secretary and and advisor to the Georgian President, disproved all the whispers about Georgia will ever cancel gas transit to Armenia.
According to him. All the whispers stating that Georgia will lock up the transit of natural gas to Armenia, are good for those who want to drive a wedge in Armenian-Georgian relations. " Georgia is a reliable partner and we have proved that many times. Georgia is not going to block gas deliveries to Armenia, we are talking just and only about terms and conditions of transit and our counterpart in this negotiations is Russia. "And the matter is quite different - the contract terms changed, and that happened not in benefit for Georgia," Pkhaladze said. At that, he stated that even in 2008, under combat conditions in Georgia, shipments did not stop even for a moment.
According Pkhaladze, Georgy margvelashvili and many experts in Georgia gave a negative evaluation to the new Agreement between Gazprom Russia and Georgia, because the terms set forth in the contract are worse than those set before.
He reiminded, that according to the prior Agreement, Georgia had up to 10% gas transmitted to Armenia. Now we get to monetary conditions, and those conditions do not give any guarantees that the amount received will form exactly that 10%. And this is the matter of price and volume relation, which has been guaranteed by previous agreement but not with this one," Pkhaladze said. To remind, at the meeting in Minsk in early January, Georgian Ministry of Energy and Russian Company of Gazprom reached the Agreement on transition to monetary payments for gas transit. Neither of Parties shares any details of this contract.