The largest opposition United National Movement (UNM) party will not attend the New Year meeting with President Salome Zourabichvili.

According to Levan Bezhashvili, a UNM member, the party will join more business-like meetings. Bezhashvili added UNM welcomes the decision of other parties that plan to partake since it would be the first opportunity to approximate certain positions over the President’s declared initiative about the launch of national reconciliation.

“The initiative voiced by the President is acceptable. The country needs a new starting point on the way out of the political crisis. We are going to use this opportunity and participate in this format. If the Georgian Dream does not accept this initiative, it would be another message to our international partners and the public that it is seizing power, usurping it and does not take into account the existing political reality,” Bezhashvili said.

Opposition MP Salome Samadashvili believes that the opposition should give a chance to the process. She said the future would show how the developments go forward.

Another opposition MP Aleksandre Rakviashvili will attend the meeting but finds it difficult to predict the outcome. Rakviashvili claimed sincerity is missing among the ruling GD or opposition UNM parties about the reconciliation idea.

“I stand sceptic over reconciliation idea although I back it. This was our initiative one year ago. Many people support it, including in the Patriarchate,” he said, having added that “true action is needed rather than empty rhetoric.”

The ruling team member, Chairman of the parliamentary Education Committee Shalva Papuashvili, confirmed the Georgian Dream Chair Irakli Kobakhidze would attend a meeting with President. Remarking on the UNM’s renouncement to partake in the meeting, Papuashvili said that this stance demonstrates their disrespect to the President and political climate.

Papuashvili labelled the UNM a destructive force that conflicts with basic principles of democracy, the supremacy of law and state institutions. “The National Movement should reconcile with the Georgian people and the Georgian state,” Shalva Papuashvili said.

President Salome Zourabichvili will host representatives of political parties at the Orbeliani Palace on December 16.