Dick Cheney: Signs 'solidarity' w/ Georgia

by Mark Silva

Dick Cheney dropped in at the Georgian embassy in Washington to declare his "solidarity'' with the Georgian people.

Our colleague, Jim Gerstenzang, who is recording the closing days of the Bush administration at the L.A. Times' Countdown to Crawford, also drew pool duty for the vice president's embassy stop Monday, and he delivered this account:

"The vice president spent two minutes 20 seconds at the Georgian embassy at 2209 Massachusetts Avenue. He walked up the cement steps and was greeted in the foyer at 4:31 p.m. by Ambassador Vasil Sikharulidze; Maj. Malkhaz Jamureli, identified by the vice president's press office as the Defense, Military, Navy and Air Attaché, and Tamta Kupradze, identified as the Second Secretary at the embassy.

"Twenty seconds after he walked through the doorway, he sat down at a wooden table, took from his Navy blue coat a pen and blue note card, and began to write on a lined, cream-colored blank page of a leather-bound remembrance book.

"He looked at his note card three times as he wrote, writing, pausing to look at the card and then writing again. He spent 75 seconds at the task, talked for 45 seconds with the hosts, speaking so quietly that your pooler, perhaps five feet away, could catch only a few words, and then departed.''

(The ambassador could be heard saying: "Thank you very much for your support.")

The vice president wrote in large hand covering more than half of the page in the guest book: "To the people of Georgia...In this hour of sorrow I offer the respect, condolences and solidarity of the United States of America."

And beneath that: "Dick Cheney.''