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Georgia poaches foreign minister

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  • Georgia poaches foreign minister

    Sydney Morning Herald
    March 12 2004

    Georgia poaches foreign minister

    President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia has chosen France's
    ambassador in Tbilisi to be his foreign minister, saying he had
    cleared the appointment with the French President, Jacques Chirac.

    Mr Saakashvili said Salome Zurabishvili, a descendant of a
    19th-century Georgian writer, Niko Nikoladze, was a diplomat of
    international standing whose family had migrated to France early in
    the 20th century.

    He told a news conference on Thursday that he believed the
    appointment was "unprecedented in the history of diplomacy".
    Diplomats are normally expected to remain loyal to their own country
    and not take up jobs in foreign governments.

    He said he would grant Ms Zurabishvili, 51, Georgian citizenship in
    addition to her French passport, a dual status the constitution
    allowed in special circumstances.

    Ms Zurabishvili has worked in the US, the European Union and NATO and
    headed the international department of France's national security
    general secretariat until taking up her post in Georgia.

    After the fall of communism many people whose families had migrated
    to Western Europe and the US returned to their eastern European
    roots. An American lawyer, for instance, served for a short time as
    foreign minister in Armenia in the 1990s.

    Mr Saakashvili, 36, is a US-trained lawyer who led a bloodless coup
    in November that brought down the veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze,
    a former Soviet foreign minister.

    Mr Saakashvili won a landslide election victory in January and
    promised to integrate the republic into NATO, the EU and the European
    mainstream.

    Almost everybody who went to the polls voted for him, after he had
    led what he called the Rose Revolution - the peaceful removal of Mr
    Shevardnadze from the presidency after 12 years.

    The young new president can answer questions in rapid-fire English,
    Russian and French as well as Georgian.
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