EU Ambassador Hartzell didn’t take Georgia as a sovereign state – GD head Kobakhidze

Irakli Kobakhidze, the chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party, said late Thursday that EU Ambassador Carl Hartzell, who has completed his four-year-term in Georgia this month, did not take Georgia as a sovereign state and his positions in some cases were “insulting to the state”.

“As this person, Hartzell, acted not as an ambassador, but as a politician, it became necessary to evaluate his activities in the way that we evaluated them.

“As for the relations between the European Union and Georgia, he played a very negative role,” Kobakhidze told Imedi TV. 

Asked to provide an example to back the assessment, Kobakhidze cited the Ambassador’s “anti-state positions” while discussing the April 19 EU-mediated agreement to resolve a several-month,post-election political standoff in Georgia, as well as “many other situations.”

The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Parliament, ruling party MP  Nikoloz Samkharadze also said earlier this week that Hartzell could have worked better in order for Georgia to receive the status of a candidate for EU membership in June.

US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan said on Thursday that she was “shocked” by such allegations against Hartzell.

The opposition claimed that the “attacks on the EU and the US Ambassadors” were the part of the Georgian Dream’s “anti-Western campaign.”