Tensions rise in Georgia over vote results

Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze is trying to outlast continuous street demonstrations calling for his resignation, as opponents vow a hunger strike to protest disputed parliamentary election results.

Georgia's central election commission has ordered a new round of voting to be held in at least 16 of 85 parliamentary districts over the next two weeks, in a bid to ease concerns about the Nov. 2 vote, which European election monitors declared had "spectacular" irregularities.

Shevardnadze accused opposition leaders Monday of trying to engineer a coup. Officials said Tuesday that he plans to meet with opposition leaders in the capital, Tbilisi, for a second time to try to resolve the issue.

Thousands of Georgians - irate at their deeply unpopular president and frustrated by widespread government corruption and alleged vote rigging - have gathered for a fourth straight day outside the parliament building, braving soaking rains to demand change.

"Georgia is as at a revolutionary moment, and an incident could spark something that [Shevardnadze] can't contain," says Fiona Hill, a senior fellow and expert on Eurasia at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The standoff is the latest crisis in post-Soviet Georgia, a Caucasus nation at the southwestern underbelly of today's Russia. It is key to American and Western strategic plans, as a transit country for an oil pipeline now under construction that will carry Caspian oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Though armed thugs have broken up one opposition rally with shooting in recent days - and protesters complained of attempts by other armed men to intimidate them overnight in Tbilisi - preventing violence may be Shevardnadze's priority.

"Violence is the last thing he wants, because it then becomes a free-for-all, and shooting down Rustaveli Prospekt [the main street in Tbilisi]," says Ms. Hill. "You could have the equivalent of the storming of the Bastille .... Shevardnadze knows this. The question is: How long can he wait it out?"

The interior ministry said it had boosted troops around key buildings and would react "appropriately" if demonstrators changed their so far peaceful tactics.

Even as opposition chief Mikhail Saakashvili vowed that supporters would start a hunger strike late Monday, analysts said the lack of an opposition strategy was starting to show.

"Everybody thought that something would come out of this, but the opposition didn't look like they had a clear strategy, and now it looks like they don't even have an exit strategy," says George Khutsishvili, head of the International Center on Conflict and Negotiation, an influential civic organization in Tbilisi.

"There are very little chances now for the opposition to consolidate power - time is working against them," Mr. Khutsishvili says. The ultimatums that Shevardnadze step down have weakened Mr. Saakashvili's position, deepened divisions within the opposition, and frightened some Georgians who fear a plunge back into the chaos of a decade ago, Khutsishvili says.

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