Salomé Zourabichvili (Georgian: სალომე ზურაბიშვილი) (born 18 March 1952) is a Georgian politician, from 2004 to 2005 Foreign Minister[1] of Georgia and a former diplomat in the French service. Currently she is the Coordinator of the Panel of Experts assisting the UN Security Council’s Iran Sanctions Committee.
Zourabichvili was born in Paris on 18 March 1952, into a family of Georgian political emigrants. She attended some of the most prestigious French schools, such as the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), and began a master's program at Columbia University in New York in the academic year of 1972-1973, taking courses with Zbigniew Brzezinski. She abandoned her studies and joined the French foreign service in 1974, becoming a career diplomat with jobs in Rome, the United Nations, Brussels, Washington, etc. The first time Zourabichvili visited Georgia was in 1986 during a break from her job at the French Embassy in Washington.
Salome Zourabichvili was Head of the Division of International and Strategic Issues of National Defence General Secretariat of France in 2001-2003. She was appointed the Ambassador of France to Georgia in 2003.
Mikhail Saakashvili President of Georgia nominated her as Foreign Minister in his new government and Zourabichvili was the first female to be appointed to this post in Georgia on 18 March 2004.
She was sacked by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli late on 19 October 2005 after a series of disputes with members of Parliament.[2] She had also been heavily criticized by a number of Georgian ambassadors. Shortly before her dismissal was announced, Zourabichvili resigned from the French foreign service, which had continued to pay her a salary while she was minister, and announced that she would remain in Georgia to go into politics.
In November 2005 she set up the organization Salome Zourabichvili’s Movement. In January 2006 she announced the establishment of a new political party Georgia's Way.
Although Zourabichvili enjoys some degree of reputation in Georgia she has not been able to establish herself in the political field. At the city council elections in Tbilisi on 5 October 2006 only 2.77% of the constituency voted for her party. Six months before an opinion poll conducted by the Georgian weekly Kviris Palitra suggested that she would garner 23.1% of the votes at presidential elections. Since October 2007, her party was part of the United Opposition alliance which nominated Zourabichvili as a Prospective Prime Minister in case of their candidate Levan Gachechiladze's victory in the January 2008 presidential election.
In course of the Georgian presidential election in 2008, Salome Zourabichvili and many other politicians in opposition agreed to the Patriarch of Georgia Ilia II's indicated support to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the House of Bagrationi.[3]
On November 12, 2010, Zourabichvili announced her withdrawal from the leadership of Georgia's Way. She was succeeded by Kakha Seturidze.[4]
Salome Zourabichvili is married to the Georgian journalist and Soviet-era dissident Janri Kashia and has two children.
Beside Georgian and French, she speaks English, German, and Italian .
| Preceded by Tedo Japaridze |
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia 18 March 2004 – 19 October 2005 |
Succeeded by Gela Bezhuashvili |