President Shevardnadze expressed regret over failure to sign an inter-state agreement with the Vatican, adding that the situation would not have aggravated so much if he were in Tbilisi.
“Preparation of the draft agreement started in Georgia long ago, right after the visit of Jan Pawe II, the Pope of Rome, to Tbilisi [in 1999]. The agreement aimed to settle the cooperation between the two states. I am Orthodox, but I honor all other religions,” Shevardnadze said in his Monday radio broadcast on September 22.
He said the work over the draft would continue. Simultaneously, the Parliament will start to work over the law on religion, which would be universal.
On September 19 President Shevardnadze, who was attending the CIS Summit in Yalta, yielded to the demand of the Georgian Orthodox Church and mass protest rally in Tbilisi and refused to sign the agreement with the Vatican.
The agreement, setting down the relations with the Vatican, was expected to be signed on September 20. Archbishop Jan Louis Tauran, the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, arrived in Tbilisi on September 18 to sign the agreement with the Georgian government.
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