EU Envoy Meets Opposition Leaders
Peter Semneby, EU’s special representative for South Caucasus, met with some of the opposition leaders on May 17 to discuss ongoing political standoff in the country.
Although having no formal role of a mediator, the EU diplomat has been engaged in regular contacts with both the authorities and the opposition leaders since the launch of street protest rallies on April 9.
Davit Usupashvili, leader of Republican Party, part of Alliance for Georgia; Nino Burjanadze, leader of Democratic Movement-United Georgia; Kakha Kukava, co-leader of Conservative Party and Salome Zourabichvili, leader of Georgia’s Way participated in the meeting with the EU diplomat.
Opposition leaders said after the meeting that the authorities should take tangible steps in order to demonstrate their readiness for genuine dialogue.
Davit Usupashvili told journalists that the President Saakashvili’s proposals, put forth on May 11 after meeting with the opposition leaders, that those proposals were similar to those that have been offered by the authorities in September as part of, as the President put it, “new wave of democratic reforms.”
“There is nothing new in the President’s [May 11] proposals; Saakashvili is speaking about these reforms for already eight months, but nothing has been done [to implement them]; so we of course can not consider those proposals as a serious step towards resolving the crisis,” Usupashvili said.
Nino Burjanadze said after the meeting: “I do not see any ground for continuation of a dialogue with the President, because I do not see anything behind that dialogue except of attempts by the authorities to kill the protest momentum.”
Also on May 17, EU special representative met with Paata Davitaia, a lawmaker from the parliamentary minority group, who is a vice-speaker of the parliament.
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