Lawyer Objects to Format of Meeting Between President Bush and Ethnic Minorities

Lawyer Objects to Format of Meeting Between President Bush and Ethnic Minorities

Tbilisi.09.05.05.MediaNews. Lawyer Tinatin Khidasheli is not happy with the proposed format of the meeting planned between President Bush and Georgian ethnic minorities.

‘It is not right for the US President to meet national minorities and representatives of civil society separately,’ she said to Media News. ‘The proposed format should have been: representatives of civil society and national minorities should be seated together in a hall. Society is united in Georgia and separating it in this way is not right.’

She believes that it was the Georgian, not the US Government that rejected the proposed format.

‘The Bratislava example is well known to us, where George Bush met with leaders of civil society of the former Soviet Union, and George Bush would probably have the same interest towards Georgian civil sector, but I am convinced that the Georgian Government refused to facilitate this,’ continued Khidasheli.

According to political expert Paata Zakareishvili, the interest of the US side towards the ethnic minorities is caused by the fact that ethnic minorities in Georgia do not feel fully integrated.

Zakareishvili, too, is not pleased with the planned meeting because, according to him, the Government specifically selected a group of minority representatives that will not be critical and will not raise problems in front of the US president.