Kremlin Stirs Ethnic Clash, Georgian Says

The newly elected president of Georgia on Wednesday accused Kremlin officials of fanning a separatist conflict in the mountainous southern republic to undermine his non-communist government.

“It is a pretext for the (Soviet) president to declare presidential rule,” Zviad Gamsakhurdia said in an interview.

More than 20 people have been killed and 180 injured, and an estimated 10,000 people have fled South Ossetia in the western corner of multiethnic Georgia since the republic’s parliament nullified the South Ossetian autonomy declaration.

“This violence is sparked by the Kremlin,” Gamsakhurdia said. The Soviet Army is “giving arms, including rockets,” to South Ossetians, he added.

Gamsakhurdia’s Roundtable bloc, a coalition of anti-communist groups, won a majority of seats in the Georgian parliament last October, and it later elected him president.

Since then, he has stripped the word “socialist” from the Georgian constitution and taken other steps toward independence, although he has stopped short of declaring an outright break from the Soviet Union.

In Tskhinvali, the main city in South Ossetia, all industrial and administrative facilities were at a standstill without power Wednesday, the independent news agency Interfax reported. Georgia cut off all electricity to the region five days ago.