Georgian Delegation In Washington Battles Perception Of Selective Justice
A delegation of high-ranking Georgian officials visited Washington last week, and at the top of their agenda was the defeat of a provision in the U.S. military budget criticizing the new government's human rights record and threatening relations to the country.
The delegation was led by Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze and also included the finance minister, chair of the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs, the chief prosecutor and several other members of parliament. The fact that the chief prosecutor -- whose brief doesn't really cover foreign relations -- was part of the delegation speaks to the fact that the Georgian government is worried about the perception that is being created by the large number of prosecutions of officials from the former government that the new government of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has carried out since taking power last year. The amendment to the defense budget, passed last month by the House of Representatives, criticized the arrests for being "in part motivated by political considerations" and said that ""political, economic and security" ties between the U.S. and Georgia could be harmed as a result.
Members of the delegation said that their efforts to convince U.S. officials of their good intentions was successful. From Civil.ge:
The Georgian government officials are now lobbying for this amendment to be removed from the U.S. Defense Authorization Act before the final version of this voluminous bill is agreed by a House and Senate conference by the end of this year. Last month the Georgian government officials and some GD MPs suggested that this amendment was a result of lobbying efforts from President Saakashvili’s UNM party.
MP Tina Khidasheli said after the meeting with Congressman Turner that “the problem in respect of this issue was in miscommunication.” “We do not expect any problems in this regard any more. Georgia will have full support from its strategic partner. The main message we are receiving from these meetings is that Georgia has more and more friends in the U.S. House and Senate,” MP Khidasheli said.
Civil.ge also flagged some interesting comments made earlier this month by the nominee to be the U.S.'s new Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Victoria Nuland, who was asked about the prosecutions during her confirmation hearing:
“Georgia has come so far in recent years, including the elections last year, then the peaceful transfer of power; the development of a vibrant multi-party parliament; greater media freedom; the efforts to curb police and prison abuses and the continuity in foreign policies. But nobody wants to see Georgia slide backwards. We completely understand that this government ran and won on a platform of redressing past abuses, but we believe strongly in the primacy of rule of law. And this cannot become cover for political retribution or even the perception of political retribution. There's got to be full transparency. There's got to be due respect for rule of law. Because the world is watching and this goes to the heart of Georgia's own aspirations, which we support, to join fully all the trans-Atlantic organizations. So Georgia's got to stay on a democratic path.”
Nuland, a career foreign service officer who until recently served as a spokesperson for the Department of States, also said that she was “concerned” about Georgia’s economy. “So we want to see Georgians looking forward, not looking backward,” she added.
(Followers of U.S. politics will recognize that last phrase; President Barack Obama has said that he doesn't intend to investigate crimes, like torture and domestic spying, from the administration of George W. Bush out of a desire to "look forward, not backward.")
Anyway, it would seem that even without Georgia's lobbying, the amendment would have had little effect. But the fact that such a high-level delegation was organized so quickly and spent such a long time meeting with such a large number of officials is a sign of how seriously Ivanishvili's new government is taking the perception that its Western allies have of the prosecutions.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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