"There are no grounds for talk of reburying Griboyedov, as the Georgian parliament has not discussed or considered the issue, not even as an idea," Nino Burjanadze said at a news briefing.
She made the statement after officials in Moscow reacted strongly to a Georgian lawmaker's proposal that Griboyedov, who was laid to rest in Tbilisi in 1829, should be reburied in his native Russia, calling the move a provocation.
The author of the famous play "Woe from the Wit" was placed in the Georgian capital's Mtatsminda Pantheon of Writers and Public Figures after being murdered by a mob in Tehran, where he had served as minister plenipotentiary.
But MP Giorgi Bokeria, deputy head of parliament's legal committee, argued Griboyedov did not belong in the pantheon of Georgia's greats as he was not an ethnic Georgian and had made no contribution to the nation's development.
Burjanadze said she was surprised at how fast some mass media had proved in spreading this "clearly provocative suggestion," and tried to play down its perceived nationalistic dimension.
"Representatives of any ethnicity enjoy equal respect in Georgia," she said. "A person's human rights will never be infringed upon in Georgia based on his or her ethnic origin."
Bokeria voiced the idea of reburying Griboyedov after Georgia's legislature moved to draft a law that would lay down criteria for selecting people of prominence who deserve to be buried in the national pantheon.
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