The US pulls the Georgian prime minister’s offer to Biden’s UN reception

The US has taken back its invitation for Georgia’s prime minister to attend a reception for world leaders held by President Joe Biden during this week’s U.N. General Assembly, a US official said. This is the latest blow to a relationship that used to be close.

Reuters was told by a government official that Washington had taken back the offer to Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and refused all meetings with the Georgian delegation.

Georgia passed a law about “foreign agents” earlier this year, they said, which was linked to the move. The person also said that recent talks with the Georgian government had convinced Washington that Tbilisi was purposely blocking its own path to joining the EU and NATO.

CNN reported that the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi said the offer had been revoked because of the Georgian government’s “anti-democratic actions, disinformation, and negative rhetoric towards the U.S. and the West.”

It said that Shalva Papuashvili, the speaker of the parliament, said that pulling the offer was “frivolous.”

Since it broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia has gotten a lot of help from the United States. However, in recent months, Georgia’s relationships with Western countries have become tense because of claims that it supports Russia and is authoritarian.

The “foreign agents” law was passed by the ruling Georgian Dream party, which many people think is run by wealthy ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. This was done even though Western countries were against it because they thought it was similar to Russian laws that were used to silence Kremlin critics.

Organizations that get more than 20% of their funds from outside the country must register as agents of foreign influence. If they don’t, they will have to follow strict rules about what they can and can’t do and be fined heavily.

In the October parliamentary election, Georgian Dream is running for a fourth term, and Ivanishvili has said many times that if the party wins, it will try to ban the pro-Western United National Movement as an alternative party.

Polls show that Georgian Dream is still the most popular party, but it has lost support since 2020, when it got almost half of the vote and a very small majority in parliament.

A top Georgian Dream MP named Mamuka Mdinaradze wrote on Facebook that Biden was trying to give the Georgian opposition a “electoral lifeline.”

The US put sanctions on two Georgian police officers this month because it said they were involved in beating up leaders of large protests against the foreign agent law. This is another sign that relations between the two countries are getting worse.

The EU said last week that it might stop letting Georgians enter without a visa if the October election is not free, fair, and peaceful. They have already said that Georgia’s application process is de facto stopped.