Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili

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Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili (Georgian: ეკატერინე ტყეშელაშვილი) (born May 23, 1977) is a Georgian jurist, politician and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia since May 5, 2008. A graduate of the Tbilisi State University, she previously practiced law and held various government posts including that of Minister of Justice and of Prosecutor General. Her first name, a Georgian form of Katherine, is commonly abbreviated as Eka (ეკა).

[edit] Biography

Tkeshelashvili was born in Tbilisi, the capital of then-Soviet Georgia. She graduated from Faculty of International Law and International Relations, Tbilisi State University in 1999 and worked as a lawyer for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Georgia, and then for IRIS Georgia, a Tbilisi office of the University of Maryland’s Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector, which she directed in 2005. Tkeshelashvili was appointed to her first government post as Deputy Minister of Interior in 2005, and then became a Chairperson of the Tbilisi Court of Appeals from May 2006 to August 2007. She served as Minister of Justice of Georgia from August 2007 to January 2008, and Prosecutor General of Georgia from January to May 2008.

Tkeshelashvili was made Minister of Foreign Affairs on May 5, 2008.^[1] Her appointment coincided with Georgia’s increasingly tense relations with its northern neighbor Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Georgia’s aspiration to join NATO. She has vowed to pursue active diplomacy to find a peaceful solution to all existing problems.^[2]

Tkeshelashvili is married and has a child.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Eka Tkeshelashvili biography. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia.

Preceded by Grigol Vashadze (acting)

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia May 5, 2008 – present

Incumbent