President’s administration turned down opposition Alliance for Georgia’s proposal to hold an extended session of National Security Council over senior Georgian officials’ alleged interference in the Ukrainian presidential elections.

President’s administration cited that the proposal was an attempted by the opposition to use the issue for its “narrow political interests” ahead of the local elections in Georgia.

“Those politicians, who demanded today to holding a session of the National Security Council, themselves do not participate in these sessions; they refuse to participate in the discussion of such strategic issues like occupied territories, relations with Russia. Therefore [Alliance for Georgia’s proposal] is nothing but using the issue of Ukrainian elections for own, narrow-political interests ahead of the [local] elections,”

“The President of Georgia is ready to participate in the discussions of such issues, which are of crucial, strategic and vital importance for the country. But at the same time, he explains and calls on the opposition representatives not to use extended sessions of National Security Council sessions for own narrow-political interests,” she added.

Practice of extended sessions of National Security Council, chaired by President Saakashvili and with participation of opposition politicians, started in August, 2009. This first meeting, which addressed not only the foreign policy, but also internal political situation including issue of detained opposition activists, was attended by leader of Alliance for Georgia, Irakli Alasania.

The second extended session of NSC was held in October, 2009 to discuss draft of Tbilisi’s strategy on occupied territories – Alasania refused to participate citing that no significant progress was achieved in implementing agreements since the previous similar NSC session.

Alasania was again absent at the third meeting, which was held upon the request of Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM), a leading party in the parliamentary minority group, to discuss potential reopening of border crossing point with Russia.

MP Levan Vepkhvadze, a vice-speaker of the parliament from CDM, said his party in general supported the idea of holding extended NSC session on the issue of Ukraine. He, however, said that such session, if held, should have discussed not what the Alliance for Georgia pushed for, but Georgia’s policy in case of victory of Viktor Yanukovych in the second round of elections in Ukraine.

“It is a difficult issue, because if a pro-Russian candidate [referring to Yanukovych] wins, it will be a signal for Moscow that it settled the Ukrainian issue and now it’s time to deal with Georgia,” MP Vepkhvadze told Civil.Ge on January 22.