Tensions spike as Georgia alleges coup

Tensions ratcheted up between Russia and Georgia following a successful Georgian military offensive against a pro-Russian separatist rebellion in the remote Kodori Gorge in July – and they are soaring again with last week's sensational allegations of a Moscow-backed coup d'état planned to overthrow President Mikhael Saakashvili.

Georgian security forces last week rounded up about 30 opposition leaders and charged 14 of them with treason in a purported plan to stage disturbances in Tbilisi, leading to an opposition seizure of power.

Most of those arrested were officials of the pro-Moscow Justice Party, whose leader, former Georgian KGB chief Igor Giorgadze, is reportedly hiding in Russia. Others were activists of the opposition Conservative Monarchists and of the Anti-Soros Movement, a coalition of groups that accuses billionaire George Soros of "interfering" in Georgian politics by funding pro-Western nongovernmental organizations and think tanks.

Mr. Saakashvili, who himself came to power on a wave of mass unrest in 2003's pro-democracy "Rose Revolution," suggested that the Kremlin stood behind the alleged coup plotters. "Certain forces in Russia decided that this autumn is the last time when it is still possible to stop the process of Georgia's formation," Saakashvili said. "Their ... hope was that local collaborators would help them. But this scenario has failed."

Russia has denied any involvement.

It's just the latest chapter in a deadly chess game – played out on Georgian soil – between Moscow and successive Georgian leaders who've sought to loosen traditional ties with Russia and move closer to the West. In the early 1990s, Russia backed the violent emergence of two separatist statelets, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to keep pressure on Georgia, experts say. Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who ran Georgia from 1992 to 2003, walked a cautious line between Russia and the West. But Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer, has pledged to reunite his nation and lead it into NATO before his term expires in 2009.

In a recent speech, Saakashvili acknowledged that this might lead to conflict with Russia. "Moscow has very firmly expressed its policy in respect to Georgia. I want to believe that this is the policy of only one part of the Russian authorities – and this policy is very simple: not to let Georgia become strong and not to let Georgia restore its territorial integrity," he said.

The danger of war with Russia was on full display when Georgia moved this summer to crush a local warlord, Emzar Kvitsiani, who was threatening to move his tiny fiefdom in the rugged Kodori Gorge away from central government control and into the arms of separatist forces in Abkhazia. In late July, Mr. Kvitsiani announced he would take up arms against the central Georgian government. Kvitsiani's paramilitary group, called Mondaire, or Hunter, was officially disbanded by Minister of Defense Irakli Okruashvili more than a year ago.

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