Georgia sacks French-born foreign minister

TBILISI - Georgia's Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli has sacked Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili, a French diplomat whose style proved too foreign for some of her subordinates.

Zurabishvili, the daughter of Georgian emigres, had been serving as France's ambassador to Tbilisi when President Mikhail Saakashvili asked French counterpart Jacques Chirac for permission to bring her into his government.

Her dismissal followed complaints from senior diplomats and the pro-government majority in parliament that the minister, who speaks Georgian with a strong French accent, was failing to properly manage her ministry.

"After consultations with parliament, I decided to remove the foreign minister from her post," Nogaideli told a news briefing, adding her replacement had not yet been chosen.

Zurabishvili's departure is the highest-profile sacking to date from a Western-oriented government catapulted to power in Dec. 2003 in a "Rose Revolution" when thousands of protesters forced veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.

Zurabishvili's appointment was seen as a symbol of the Caucasus state's new pro-Western slant and of its ambition to join the European Union. Analysts say that is unlikely to change with her sacking.

From the outset, some colleagues in the Foreign Ministry struggled to adjust to their French boss.

They worried that as an outsider she would not understand Georgian politics and that her imperfect command of Georgia and her lack of Russian -- the lingua franca of the region -- could be a handicap.

Her most high-profile role has been handling disagreements with Moscow over Russian military bases on Georgian soil and over two separatist provinces that Tbilisi says are backed by Moscow.

But complaints from lawmakers, backed by some top Foreign Ministry officials, have focused on her style. They accused Zurabishvili of keeping parliament, dominated by Saakashvili supporters, in the dark about her activities.

"Salome Zurabishvili's style of leadership is unacceptable," Georgia's ambassador to the United Nations, Revaz Adamia, told Rustavi-2 television. "Communications with the embassies and inside the ministry have been disrupted." Parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze demanded the minister be sacked on Wednesday and her fate was settled when Zurabishvili met Saakashvili late on Wednesday.

Zurabishvili scored her biggest success when, after years of wrangling between Tbilisi and Moscow, she won a deal in May under which Russia agreed to withdraw its bases by 2008.

Shortly before Nogaideli announced her dismissal, Zurabishvili said on Rustavi-2 that criticism of her performance was "a rebellion not against me but against the president".

She said parliament should be dissolved and called on those who supported her to rally in the capital on Thursday. Nogaideli said later her comments were "strange" and regrettable.

- REUTERS