Gunfire Routs Rally for Ousted Georgian Leader Conflict: Gamsakhurdia's backers stage protests. The new regime seeks his extradition from nearby Armenia.
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Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Los Angeles, Calif.
Author: JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG
Date: Jan 8, 1992
Start Page: 1
Section: PART-A; Foreign Desk
Text Word Count: 1025
Document Text

(Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1992all Rights reserved)

Partisans of Georgia's ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia went on the offensive Tuesday, demolishing a television tower, trying to sabotage rail service and marching defiantly by the thousands through the capital until they were scattered by gunfire and smoke bombs.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Armenia, negotiations were under way that the Georgians hope will lead to the extradition of Gamsakhurdia, accused by opposition leaders of absconding with 10 million rubles-about $100,000-and a stash of foreign currency when he fled with his family and die-hard supporters early Monday.

Two people in the Tbilisi crowd chanting "Georgia! Zviad!" in the president's honor were wounded during the afternoon rally and march as fighters from the anti-Gamsakhurdia Sakartvelos Mkhedrioni (Knights of Georgia) militia fired their weapons at the crowd of 3,000 to 4,000.

The militiamen claimed they were using only blanks to disperse the protest, banned under the Military Council's state of emergency decree. They showed some of the white-tipped rounds to reporters as proof. But correspondents saw at least one man recoil as though he had been struck by a live bullet in the leg.

It was the first major face-off between Georgia's new rulers and Gamsakhurdia loyalists since the president escaped from the encircled Parliament. The Mkhedrioni leader said bluntly that he will brook no more demonstrations on Gamsakhurdia's behalf.

"I gave the order to break it up (Tuesday's protest) and will do so again tomorrow and the day after, because we have announced a curfew and a state of emergency," said Dzhaba Ioseliani, who is a member of the Military Council.

Tengiz Sigua, the interim prime minister, reported that three other "hot spots" of pro-Gamsakhurdia sentiment have flared up in Georgia, sometimes in a violent way. He accused the regional prefects appointed by the president of being behind the outbreaks.

"By order of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, weapons were distributed among these people-hand grenades and automatic weapons, for instance," Sigua said. "They were given instructions to start destabilizing the situation when the critical time came."

In the Black Sea resort city of Sukhumi, protesters tried to block the railway station but were foiled by authorities, he said. In Zugdidi, in the Mengrelia region where the Gamsakhurdia clan originated, about 40 feet of railway track on a major east-west trunk line was torn up.

In Gali, in the western Adzharian district, Sigua said, a television relay tower was destroyed, making it impossible to retransmit the signal from Tbilisi television, which went over to the Georgian political opposition even before the president's flight.

Sigua, who served as Gamsakhurdia's chief of government until late last summer, said people who still support the 52-year-old nationalist firebrand have been brainwashed by the state-controlled media.

But Gamsakhurdia's "rating" has now plummeted so precipitously that it is ludicrous to think he could muster a large army of underground partisans, Sigua said.

Tuesday was Christmas Day in Georgia, a Caucasus Mountains nation that follows the Orthodox religious rite. But workers toiled anyway along shattered Rustaveli Prospect, piling dump trucks high with rubble and stringing lengths of copper wire so the city's trams could run again.

On its first full day as the unchallenged administrator of Georgia, Sigua's provisional government asked for the world's help in footing the bill for the cleanup as well as for mending this former Soviet republic's wrecked economy.

"The Georgian people overthrew the dictatorial regime at great loss," Sigua's government said in its first "Address to the Nations of the World."

"The blood of innocent people was spilled. . . . With gratitude, we would welcome any offers from foreign countries concerning any kind of humanitarian aid," it said.

Gamsakhurdia's Georgia was singled out by American officials as the prototype of a country where Communist rule had been succeeded by nationalist authoritarianism, and was refused U.S. assistance.

The new government pledged "unswerving" support for human rights and democratic rule and said it is ready to formally adhere to the Helsinki human rights accords, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and other norms of international conduct.

To make the regime more palatable, Sigua said he is trying to persuade Georgia's supreme authority, the Military Council, to reverse its decision of last Thursday and allow Parliament to reconvene by Jan. 15. He said elections to choose a new legislature will likely be held before April's end.

According to officials in Tbilisi, Armenia has offered a permanent home to Gamsakhurdia's wife, Manana, and two children but has said the president can stay only a short while. He has reportedly asked the Armenians for permission to fly to the West, something the Georgians told the government in Yerevan they oppose. They want Gamsakhurdia kept in Armenia until he can be returned to stand trial on unspecified charges.

The man who was overwhelmingly elected Georgia's leader last May is now holed up in a small hotel in the Armenian mountain resort town of Idzhevan, along with about 120 of his followers, most of whom are armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles, Sigua said.

Ioseliani told reporters that the president carried off a war chest of 10 million rubles in state funds and sold off automobiles as he fled, evidently to raise more cash. Ioseliani called Gamsakhurdia a "state criminal."

In the talks with the Armenians, which began at 4 p.m. in Idzhevan, Georgia will press for rapid return of its funds to guarantee that Gamsakhurdia cannot use them to try to raise a mercenary army, Sigua said.

Before being ousted, Gamsakhurdia warned that Georgia's badly depleted reserves of grain and fuel would run out within two weeks; Sigua's government, whose responsibilities seem largely confined to the economic realm, has already begun trying to restore the supply lines.

Thousands of Tbilisi residents had their apartments damaged or demolished by the fighting, and Sigua said his government has decided to deed what had been state-owned dachas, or country cottages, to those left homeless by the conflict. They also will be paid some sort of compensation.

GEORGIAN REBELS ACCUSE PRESIDENT GAMSAKHURDIA OF STEALING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Story

Georgian rebels in control of Tbilisi said on Tuesday (January 7) that President Zviad Gamsakhurdia took the equivalent of at least 117,648 million United States dollars when he fled to Armenia.
The allegation was reported on Russian television, which also showed pictures of the house in Armenia to which Gamsakhurdia fled after two weeks of fighting in Tbilisi. He said on Wednesday he had fled to stop the bloodshed and had not resigned.
The Armenians and Georgians are discussing his fate. Rebel Military Council spokesman Georgy Shengelaya called him a state criminal and demanded he be returned. Armenia said Gamsakhurdia had not been given safe haven, but he would not be forced to leave.
Parts of the Georgian parliament were still burning on Tuesday and the rebels were trying to re-establish order in Tbilisi. The Military Council has not specified when it will hand power to a provisional civilian government headed by former prime minister Tengiz Sigua. Sigua said in Tbilisi on Tuesday he had ordered an inquiry into an incident that day in which rebels fired into a rally of Gamsakhurdia supporters, wounding several people.

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