Soviet Republic Threatens to Attack Protesters : Georgia: Three die in clashes with police. Yeltsin is confident of progress on Armenia’s dispute with Azerbaijan.

Georgian strongman Zviad Gamsakhurdia threatened Sunday to send his troops against opponents who seized the republic’s television center earlier in the day after clashes that killed at least three and injured dozens, Soviet news agencies reported.

Gamsakhurdia’s aides, reached by telephone in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, denied reports that the broadcast building would be stormed soon, but they confirmed that at least 10,000 armed loyalists filled the streets awaiting orders from the president.

Opposition leaders, who have been locked in a tense standoff with Gamsakhurdia for three weeks, predict that any use of troops against Georgian demonstrators would likely spark a civil war.

In another troubled area of the Caucasus Mountains, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin visited the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region and emerged confident of progress toward ending four years of violence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in which nearly 1,000 have been killed.

Yeltsin made no predictions of an imminent resolution of the conflict after his visit to the volatile region, where tens of thousands turned out to cheer him and the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

But the Russian leader said he expects a meeting today, in a health resort in the town of Zhilesnovod, to lead to the start of direct negotiations among the parties disputing the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

He told reporters after his 2 1/2-hour stopover in the regional center of Stepanakert that he would not have gone “if there was not light at the end of the tunnel.”

The Tass news agency quoted Yeltsin as calling the talks with ethnic leaders “stormy and difficult.”

The conflict in neighboring Georgia took a violent turn early Sunday when those protesting Gamsakhurdia’s hard-line rule became angered by police manhandling of hunger strikers who had gathered outside the Parliament building in the capital.

Enraged protesters hurled rocks and struggled with police through the predawn hours, and a group of about 200 stormed and occupied the broadcast center.

Shots were heard in the center of Tbilisi, but most of the 41 people hospitalized were said to have been injured by stones.

Three people died, according to Tass.

One of them was 37-year-old Givi Abesadze, a cardiologist, who set himself afire to protest the beating of demonstrators carried out by Gamsakhurdia’s police, the Russian Information Agency reported.

Thousands of police and national guard troops were said to be joining the opposition, now headed by former Prime Minister Tengiz Segua.

“The night clashes with the opposition have shown that nothing will stop Gamsakhurdia from preserving the totalitarian regime,” Tass quoted a maverick national guardsman as saying. “We have come here with one aim only--to prevent bloodshed. We will fire only if they use force against demonstrators again.”

Tass said Gamsakhurdia and a key opposition leader, Tedo Paatashvili of the Georgian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, had already begun one-on-one talks. No opposition spokesman could be reached immediately for confirmation of that report.

Through use of a mobile television unit that forces loyal to Gamsakhurdia had managed to retain, Prime Minister Vassarion Gugushvili appealed to opposition leaders to disband their armed groups and negotiate an end to the violence.

Clashes between supporters and opponents of Gamsakhurdia have broken out repeatedly since Sept. 2, when police fired on demonstrators. The skirmishes have set off charges that the president sought to impose a Stalinist dictatorship.

While Gugushvili’s offer of talks raised initial hopes that Gamsakhurdia may be ready to make concessions, he continued to be surrounded by an estimated 10,000 supporters--most of them armed--who could be mobilized against the protesters at the president’s urging.

Gamsakhurdia addressed his supporters briefly Sunday, calling for a peaceful settlement of the tense conflict, a further sign he may have been reconsidering earlier threats to send his national guardsmen against the people.

“It is necessary that there be no spilling of the blood of young people who are on the side of the opposition,” the authoritarian president, who won election by a landslide last year, told the crowd. “It is necessary to explain the situation to them, so that they go over to the side of the law. On the side of the opposition stands party bureaucracy and the pseudo-intelligentsia, while the true Georgia is with us.”

However, the Russian Information Agency quoted Gamsakhurdia as saying in the same speech that those occupying the television center were attempting an illegal putsch.

“According to several sources, Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia announced that toward midnight the building would be seized by militia and national guardsmen loyal to him,” Tass reported.

Opposition figures were working out defensive plans, Soviet television said. However, there were no reports early today of an attack.

Thousands of demonstrators were gathered outside the television station, but Tass described the supporters of the president as numbering in the “many thousands.”

Gamsakhurdia’s press secretary, Georgy Burdzhanadze, contended that virtually all of the people filling vast Rustaveli Street in central Tbilisi were demonstrating on the side of the president.

He denied, however, that Gamsakhurdia had vowed to retake the television station by force.

In neighboring Armenia, where an independence referendum won overwhelming support a day earlier, leaders took part in the diplomatic effort Sunday to resolve the issue of which republic should rule Nagorno-Karabakh.

The mountainous enclave is predominantly populated by Christian Armenians. It was deeded to Azerbaijan in the 1920s, after the Muslim republic joined the Soviet Union. The Armenian population claims it is repressed and has been agitating for annexation to Armenia for the past four years.

After meeting with Armenian leader Levan Ter-Petrosyan, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev said they are confident all parties will agree to talks aimed at resolving the protracted conflict.

Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov refused to take part in negotiations held in the Nagorno-Karabakh center of Stepanakert because of a dispute over which flag should fly over the venue. But a deputy was sent to the talks, and Azerbaijan gave the visiting mediators assurances that an envoy will attend future sessions.

Yeltsin said he expects a communique to be issued late today setting down the five or six points both Armenia and Azerbaijan agree on in respect to the governance of Nagorno-Karabakh. Other issues would have to be worked out in negotiations, the leaders said.

Buoyed by the resounding endorsement for Armenian independence, which official results put at 99.36% from the 95% of Armenian voters who turned out for the ballot Saturday, republic leaders turned their attention to garnering international recognition of Armenian sovereignty.

California Rep. Richard H. Lehman (D-Sanger) and three other visiting Congress members called on the Bush Administration to recognize Armenian independence immediately.

“I don’t think we should drag our feet at all. Why wait to do what we are going to do anyway? To do it now would be a very important signal,” Lehman said.

“This country has played by all the rules,” Lehman added. “We have to reward that kind of behavior.”

Eight of the remaining 12 Soviet republics have declared independence since the Aug. 19 coup attempt in Moscow. Armenian leaders said they are working toward independence through constitutional channels, which call for a referendum and a gradual process of dissociation from the union.

Times staff writer Carey Goldberg, in Yerevan, contributed to this report.