The Speaker of the Parliament, David USUPASHVILI met with the Deputy-Secretary of State, Mrs. Maria Ivanovich, the Assistant to the Deputy-Secretary of State on European and Eurasian Issues, Mr. Eric Rubin and  the Assistant to the Deputy-Secretary of State on Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Issues, Mr. Thomas Melia. The main topics of the conversations were as follows: strategic cooperation, NATO integration, democratization of the country and Constitutional changes. The participants of the meetings were the Members of the Parliamentary Delegation: the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Tedo JAPARIDZE, the Member of the Committee on Defense and Security, the Chair of the Faction “Georgian Dream – Free Democrats”, Irakli CHIKOVANI. 

“We have met with the representatives of the State Department, who work on Europe, Caucasus and Georgia issues. At the meetings, Georgian Delegation delivered the message: after the new Government came to authority, the relations between Georgia and USA will change in the positive direction”, - David USUPASHVILI stated. According to him, the parties touched upon the Constitutional changes as well. “Upon considering the Constitutional changes, we attached our attention not only to the concrete issue, which is under voting in the Parliament, but to in general, to improvement of the Constitution, inasmuch as they noted, the Constitution shall not be adjusted to one person. Nowadays, we have such Constitution and it shall not ever repeat”, - he noted.
The Assistant to the Deputy-Secretary of State on European and Eurasian Issues, Mr. Eric Rubin expressed his content about activity of the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia and his team in the Parliament.
“Certainly, first of all, it was the great pleasure to welcome the Chairman Usupashvili here to Washington with his delegation and to have the chance to begin the discussion, we’ll be continuing today on all the many areas, where Georgia and United States are working together. I told him that we very much admired his leadership and leadership of his team in the Parliament, that we know they have had very many difficult challenges in recent months, that we appreciated the work that he has done together with the leaders of the opposition on the Resolution on Georgia’s Diplomatic Foreign Policy and Security Orientation and Euro-Atlantic aspirations and that we’re strongly supportive on efforts of the Constitutional reform that are aimed at ensuring the life and stability of this Constitution. I also told him that we continue to strongly support the Georgian people with the aspirations for future anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions. We talked a little bit about our appreciation for Georgia’s commitments to the ISAF efforts in Afghanistan, this subject will be discussing further. We are expressing our deep appreciation not just for the commitments but the sacrifices that Georgian people and individual Georgian families have made in support of the effort in Afghanistan. This contributes to the deep friendship, partnership and I would say, very positive and worm working relations that we have together and it has been a real pleasure so far today”.