Bryza Meets Opposition Leaders
Matthew Bryza, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, held talks with opposition leaders from the nine-party opposition coalition and the New Rights Party on January 19.
Levan Gachechiladze, the main opposition presidential candidate, told reporters following the talks that they had spoke of ?the numerous mistakes? made by the American side in its assessment of the January 5 presidential election.
?I am deeply concerned that they made incorrect and wrong assessments,? Gachechiladze said. ?They [US diplomats] promised us that the forthcoming parliamentary election will be much freer than the presidential one.?
Bryza has recently been heavily criticized by the opposition, especially after he said on Georgian TV a day after the January 5 election, at least according to the translation, that the election had been held without any major violations. In an interview with a local newspaper this week, Tina Khidasheli of the Republican Party, slammed the U.S. position on the election, saying ?as everybody knows? it was largely due to Bryza being Saakashvili’s ?personal friend.?
Speaking after the talks with Bryza, Salome Zourabichvili, leader of Georgia?s Way Party – an opposition bloc member -, tried to downplay Bryza’s earlier positive assessment of the election. She blamed Georgian TV stations for badly translating his words, saying there was a tendency to overly focus on the positive in such translations.
?The same can be said about the OSCE report, when you [referring to TV journalists] covered only the positive aspects and said nothing about the negative assessments,? Zourabichvili said. ?As a result, people’s attitude towards the United States and the West in general has changed for the worse and this is unfortunate.?
