President of Cyprus will visit Georgia
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, April 16
President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades will visit Georgia for the first time on April 16-18, Cypriot government Spokesman Prodromos Prodromou has reported.
“This will be a historic visit,” the Cypriot media reports.
The sides will discuss bilateral relations, investments and trade-related issues, as well as Georgia's strengthening ties with the European Union.
Last year the government of Cyprus and Archbishop of the country Chrysostomos II made an unprecedented decision to gift Georgia 12,295 square meters of land to build the most large-scale Georgian monastery complex in Europe there.
A dialogue over the topic had been going on for years. Cyprus made the final decision on January 4, 2018, on the birthday of Georgia’s Patriarch Ilia II.
“Georgia has always had strong ties with Cyprus. The ties are alive and are strengthening even further,” Georgian Dream lawmaker and head of the Parliament’s Regional Politics Committee Zaza Gabunia said.
Metropolitan Saba Gigiberia said that the decision was an "exception made for Georgia by Cyprus” and the country also freed the Georgian Patriarchate from the property fee.
In his recent interview for the Georgian Public Broadcaster, former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen stated that the NATO could use the EU-Cyprus model for acceptance Georgia into the alliance.
Cyprus became an EU-member state in 2004 on the condition that the EU law is suspended in areas where the Cypriot government (Government of the Republic) does not exercise effective control.
