Date and Time
December 7, 2006
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Availability
RSVP Required by 5PM December 4

Speaker
Zurab Noghaideli - Prime Minister of the Republic of Georgia

His Excellency Zurab Noghaideli assumed the prime ministerial position in Georgia in February 2005. He started his political career in the Green Party of Georgia in the 1990s. Noghaideli was a member of the Parliament of Georgia from 1992 to 2000, where he chaired the Parliamentary Committee on Environment Protection and Natural Resources (1992-1995) and the Parliamentary Tax and Income Committee (1999-2000). He was appointed Minister of Finance in the government of Eduard Shevarnadze in May 2000, but was dismissed from this post in 2002 due to his growing dissent with the corrupt policies of the government. During these years, he was considered a member of a team of young reformists headed by Zurab Zhvania and Mikheil Saakashvili and proved to be quite an effective minister. After the Rose Revolution of November 2003, Noghaideli returned to government as the economic adviser to the acting president Nino Burjanidze. He was re-appointed to his old post as Minister of Finance in February 2004 in the government of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania.

Noghaideli graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in physics in 1988. He also specialized in the Institute of Geology of the Academy of Sciences of Estonia.