A senior lawmaker from ruling Georgian Dream coalition, Tedo Japaridze, who chairs parliamentary committee for foreign affairs, said Tbilisi should snub next round of informal dialogue with Moscow this week in protest against Kremlin-proposed new treaty with breakaway Abkhazia.

Georgian PM’s special envoy for relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze, has left for Prague to meet Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, as part of bilateral dialogue launched in late 2012, discussing mainly trade and economic related issues. 

MP Tedo Japaridze, who is in Switzerland participating in a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, told Georgian journalists on October 14 that draft of the Russia-proposed treaty with Abkhazia makes “accent on open annexation” and “speaks directly about annexation – whether Abkhazians want it or not.”

“In this situation I would advise my colleagues to refrain from participation in this round [of talks],” PM Japaridze said. “This is my personal opinion that if I were a Georgian [negotiator] I would think twice whether it is possible and acceptable for us to hold this round [of talks]; I would have refrained from [participation].”

On the eve of his departure to Prague for a meeting with Karasin, Abashidze responded MP Japaridze’s remarks by saying: “I would have told him and explained to him why I am going to [Prague] if my old friend, batoni Tedo, had phoned me.”

“But as it seems his brakes failed, it is perhaps also because of age,” Abashidze, 63, said in a brief comment to Rustavi 2 TV late on October 14, referring to MP Japaridze, 68.