GUAM Secretary General Valeri Chechelashvili met with IAPM’s students
9 Secretary General of the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development Valeri Chechelashvili visited the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management on February 9. At the start of his visit, Mr. Chechelashvili had a meeting with the Academy’s management team -- IAPM’s Chancellor Anatoliy Podoliaka, Provost for International Relations Ihor Piliayev, Provost for Research Mykola Holovatyi and Provost for Educational Work Liudmyla Bizhyk. During the meeting, the distinguished guest was familiarized with the history, current research educational and research potential and sociocultural infrastructure of the Academy. The meeting participants noted the importance of further intensification of the cultural and human dimension of multilateral cooperation within the GUAM framework. The meeting passed off in an atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding.
In the course of the visit, GUAM Secretary General met with Academy’s students. Ihor Piliayev, Provost for International Relations – Director General of the IAPM’s International Open University, introduced the high guest to the students community: “Today we have a guest – Valeri Chechelashvili, a man who is well known in diplomatic circles, who held in his day major posts in the government of Georgia; in particular, he served as Minister of Finance, as well as represented Georgia at the UN, was the Georgia Ambassador to Ukraine and the Russian Federation. More recently, Valeri Karlovych has headed for several successive years such a respectable and relevant organization as GUAM that includes Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova.”
At the beginning of his speech, Valeri Chechelashvili thanked the Academy’s administration for the invitation and emphasized how important it is to occasionally speak to an audience, have feedback, which favors generation of new ideas.
As GUAM Secretary General, Mr. Chechelashvili told the students the history of the establishment of this organization, its development, structure and principles of its activities. “Common foreign economic interests and the European integration principles to which its member countries are committed represent important uniting factors for them,” – he pointed out.
Valeri Chechelashvili mentioned three top-priority areas of work of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development -- GUAM: energy, transport and tourism. “GUAM covers a territory ranging from the west coat of the Caspian Sea to the European Union’s frontier, so the member countries have in their territory important transport-communication corridors, which is evidence of substantial potential of these countries,” – GUAM Secretary General remarked.
Speaking of the projects that GUAM implements, the guest laid special emphasis on the importance of the establishment in 2006 of the GUAM free trade area, which provides for free movement of people, goods, capital and services. Over the period of the organization’s existence, trade turnover among the four GUAM member-countries has significantly increased. At the same time, Valeri Chechelashvili accentuated the prominent role of Ukraine in cooperation of the countries: “Ukraine is a country of regional significance, which, as is known, seeks to become a regional leader.”
Informing Academy’s Ukrainian and foreign students about the prospects for cooperation among various countries and the current external situation, Valeri Karlovych Chechelashvili addressed a proposal to the Academy’s administration to invite IAPM’s students to the GUAM Secretariat in order for them to get more closely familiar with the organization and to show them how an institution of such a level operates, which would prove of interest to future diplomats and managers of foreign economic activity studying at the Academy.
Following the guest’s speech, the meeting took the form of a question-and-answer session. Students were interested to know the plans of cooperation of the four countries in the fields of education, prospects for an increase in the GUAM membership, as well as this organization’s capabilities in the area of solving ethnic conflicts of the member countries.
As a keepsake of the meeting at the Academy, IAPM’s Chancellor presented Valeri Chechelashvili with a gift edition “The Prominent Figures of Ukraine” issued by the Academy’s Publishing House.