U.S. Presses Georgia to Send Orphans

It’s a given in high-level diplomacy that carefully planned state visits sometimes get hijacked by the unexpected, but it has been awhile since one got derailed by a group of orphans.

On Thursday, that fate clouded a stop in Washington by Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the president of Georgia, a former Soviet republic that straddles important new trade corridors linking oil-rich Central Asia with European factories.

While Shevardnadze arrived here to lure trade, investment and economic assistance to his struggling nation, the interest of some Americans in the visit was focused elsewhere: the fate of about 15 Georgian orphans, most of them infants, who are trapped in a struggle between U.S. families hoping to adopt them and Shevardnadze’s wife, Nanuli.

She is determined to prevent their departure, even though they would remain orphans in their homeland. Nanuli Shevardnadze has placed herself at the forefront of an intense nationalist debate that reflects the concern of some in Georgia that the country has been losing too many of its children. Nevertheless, those familiar with the issue believe some Georgian authorities were prepared to release the children already promised to foreign parents until the Georgian first lady intervened.

“She’s been very vocal and public in her opposition,” said Linda Perilstein, executive director of Cradle of Hope, an adoption agency in Silver Spring, Md., that specializes in foreign adoptions and has dealt with 11 of the Georgian cases. “She believes Georgian kids should stay in Georgia.”

Georgia’s first couple had been on the ground only a few hours Wednesday evening when they were hit by the issue. It was the focus of a two-hour meeting between Nanuli Shevardnadze and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the mother of two adopted children.

In an interview, Landrieu said Nanuli Shevardnadze initially claimed the adoptions had not been conducted legally and the American couples had been misled. Later, she indicated that the cases would be reviewed by a Georgian government commission, according to Landrieu.

“It’s a very emotional issue for all involved, but I think it was a good, positive dialogue,” Landrieu said. “I plan to work closely with the State Department to resolve these cases. I hope parents don’t give up.”

Neither of the Shevardnadzes issued public comments.

But on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Eduard Shevardnadze was quizzed about it by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. Smith said he urged the Georgian president to allow the children already promised to American families to come to the U.S.

“He heard that message very strongly, and there were a lot of heads nodding around the table,” Smith said. “He said he’d look into it.”

White House aides said they were unsure if the adoption issue would come up during Shevardnadze’s meeting today with President Clinton, but they said other administration members would raise it in their meetings with the Georgian president.

Interest in the issue has been generated mainly by the prospective parents, who are faced with a situation in which the children already promised them--whose names and faces they know--may never enter their lives.

“You get attached, you talk about the child, photos go up on the fridge and it’s all very real,” said Jo Ann Jennings, a Salt Lake City teacher who, with her husband, Glen, first applied to adopt a Georgian child a year ago. The couple are waiting for a 9-month-old baby girl named Ana. “She’s already part of our life. To lose her now would be like a death in the family,” Jo Ann Jennings said.

In at least two instances since Georgia placed a moratorium on foreign adoptions in January, children initially promised to U.S. families reportedly have been placed in Georgian homes.

Prospective parents have seized on the Shevardnadzes’ visit as a rare chance to exert political pressure through their own government. Working through the Internet, Jennings organized a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress.

Adoption agency officials estimate that between 2,500 and 3,000 children from the former Soviet Union have been placed with U.S. parents during the past few years. One agency alone placed about 75 children from Georgia.

The children involved in the current dispute were assigned to U.S. parents for adoption during the second half of last year. But they were still in orphanages or hospitals when the Georgian government halted all international adoptions pending passage of a new law to regulate them.

The prospective American parents, their adoption agencies and, now, some powerful voices in Washington argue that those children already matched with families in the United States be allowed to go.

“These kids were promised, they have loving families waiting for them, why keep them in an orphanage?” asked Perilstein of the Maryland adoption agency.