The FINANCIAL -- According to Civil Georgia, Grigol Vashadze, Georgia’s foreign minister, who holds double Georgia-Russian citizenship, said he had appealed to President Medvedev to renounce his Russian citizenship.

“I appealed the President of Russian Federation yesterday; I put my [Russian] passport in the envelope [to send it]; hence I have terminated my responsibilities as a Russian citizen,” Vashadze told journalists on November 4.

“I am not a citizen of Russia any more,” he added.

The announcement comes after a Russian lawmaker Semyon Bagdasarov called for depriving Vashadze of his Russian citizenship, citing Vashadze’s as he put it anti-Russian position. The Russian State Duma, however, refused to consider the proposal on the grounds that such procedure of depriving citizenship was not envisaged by the Russian constitution.

Vashadze, who has lived in Russia for about 30 years, worked for the Soviet Foreign Ministry between 1981 and 1988. After quitting the diplomatic service he was engaged in a private business, before President Saakashvili offered him to take the post of the Deputy Foreign Minister in 2008.
 
In an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant in December, 2008, Vashadze said when asked if he wanted to reject the Russian citizenship after the August war: “No. I’ve got no citizenship of the Russian government. Government will go, but Russia and the Russian people will remain and they will make appropriate conclusions about what has happened in August.”

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