Ex-Foreign Minister Speaks of Foreign, Domestic Politics

In an interview with the daily Rezonansi on April 15 Georgian ex-Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili and a leader of the opposition party Georgia’s Way said that Georgia’s current foreign policy of “balancing”  between Russia, the U.S. and the EU, meaning inconsistently supporting one party’s interests at the expense of another, has failed to be successful.

“There is no alternative to this triangle, when their interests are taken into consideration… It is very difficult, but the only alternative is confrontation – first with Russia and then with everyone. Today we have good relations with one [country], tomorrow with another – we should put an end to these games. The policy of balancing has failed. Stability is possible only with clearly declared interests and in this triangle,” Zourabichvili said.

She said while commenting on the March 31 Russian-Georgian agreement on bases pullout that “surprisingly” she could not find a provision in this agreement referring to the Gudauta military base in breakaway Abkhazia.

The March 31 agreement is based mainly on a joint declaration of Georgian and Russian Foreign Ministers signed in Moscow by Salome Zourabichvili and Sergey Lavrov on May 30, 2005.

According to that declaration, the sides agreed to continue working on the launch of an international monitoring program for the military base in Gudauta under the aegis of the OSCE. Russia claims it has already closed down its base in Gudauta, as envisaged by the 1999 OSCE Istanbul treaty, while Georgia insists on international monitoring of the base to verify its closure.

“I was a little bit surprised that issues related to the Gudauta base have disappeared from the agreement,” the ex-Foreign Minister said.

An opinion poll conducted by the Georgian weekly Kviris Palitra and published on April 10 suggested that Salome Zourabichvili would garner 23.1% of votes if a presidential election were held today. President Saakashvili ranked first with 33%, which is an all-time low for the Georgian President.

Salome Zourabichvili said that her popularity “is not a surprise” for her.

“I travel a lot in regions and meet people. My popularity is high, on the one hand because I was treated unfairly [referring to her dismissal from the Foreign Minister’s position last October] and on the other hand because no one suspects me of having links to corruption,” Zourabichvili said.

She also said that the government has made many mistakes since the Rose Revolution.

“[The authorities] are losing contact with the people. The government conducts no dialogue with the opposition, which is absolutely unimaginable in any democratic state. This cannot go on for long. Local self-governance elections should become an indicator, which should tell a lot to the government,” Zourabichvili said.

She also said that the Georgian Parliament “is now politically dead” and the pro-presidential parliamentary majority is ignoring opposition lawmakers, who have announced a boycott to the parliamentary sessions.

Zourabichvili said that through this boycott the opposition tries to show society that “it is incapable of changing the situation.”