Four Killed as Soviet Georgia Fighting Grows

In the sharpening struggle between Georgia’s embattled president and his armed opponents, rebellious members of the southern Soviet republic’s national guard attacked a power station here early today but were fought off by police loyal to him in a gun battle that left four dead and four wounded.

President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who only hours before had declared a state of emergency in Georgia, declared his intention to fight back with all the force at his disposal. “We must arrest these people,” he told a pre-dawn press conference. “We will defeat them.”

Another armed confrontation intensified meanwhile in Tadzhikistan in Soviet Central Asia, further dispelling the optimism created by a breakthrough in the worst of the Soviet unrest, the long-running dispute over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

Georgia Shengerlia, a Gamsakhurdia adviser, said that about 30 members of the Georgian national guard who have mutinied against the president attacked the central power station in Tbilisi about 2:30 a.m. today in an attempt to cut off electricity in the downtown area, including the president’s headquarters.

Two of the guardsmen and two policemen loyal to Gamsakhurdia were killed in the battle, according to Shengerlia. Four more men, three of them police and one an anti-Gamsakhurdia guardsman, were wounded.

But Kaha Gvelesiany, a spokesman for rebel members of the guard, denied that there had been an attempt to capture the power station, saying that the clash occurred when Gamsakhurdia loyalists tried to kidnap one of the rebels and police joined in support of the loyalists.

“It’s absolutely impossible,” Gvelesiany said, dismissing the government account of the incident. “No one here wants bloodshed because we are conscious that we are all Georgians.”

Gamsakhurdia had announced late Tuesday that he was invoking direct presidential rule after claiming he was the target of “a military-civilian putsch.” He maintained he would not use force unless the opposition resorted to violence.

The state-of-emergency decree did not include a curfew, but police will have added powers to stop, search and detain citizens. The president also declared a general mobilization of draft-age men and called for creation of local patrols to keep public order.

The clampdown came after more than three weeks of escalating political tension in Tbilisi, with daily protests for and against the president clogging the city’s thoroughfares and barricades blocking traffic. Renegade members of the Georgian national guard have occupied the city television center, and both they and pro-Gamsakhurdia troops have deployed several armored personnel carriers and artillery.

The heightened conflict between the Georgian strongman and anti-government forces who charge that he seeks a Stalinist dictatorship came against a backdrop of renewed hope for ending the bloodshed between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

After 13 hours of intensive negotiations, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin early Tuesday announced that both combatant republics had agreed to a cease-fire and withdrawal of guerrilla units from the predominantly Armenian enclave in the republic of Azerbaijan by the beginning of next year.

Even as the negotiations were proceeding, six Armenians, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed when Azerbaijani militia attacked the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Chapar, according to the Soviet news agency Tass. Soviet Interior Ministry forces arrived to stop the fighting.

Hard bargaining still lies ahead to resolve the four-year crisis that has cost as many as 1,000 lives. But the progress raised hopes that republic leaders such as Yeltsin will be more successful at resolving ethnic problems than were their counterparts from the central government in Moscow.

“It would be wrong to say that we settled the Karabakh problem at this meeting,” Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan told a news conference in the Russian spa town of Zheleznovodsk, where the talks were held. “But we have certainly made a step towards its solution.”

In Georgia, the demonstrators demanding Gamsakhurdia’s ouster said they were being joined by more national guardsmen deserting the president’s side.

Emboldened by their recent successes, the opposition took several of the president’s supporters captive early Tuesday after they fired shots that appeared intended to create panic.

Gamsakhurdia struck back with the state of emergency.

“There is a military coup in Georgia now against the president and the Parliament,” Gamsakhurdia, his bulging eyes ringed by dark circles, told reporters Tuesday evening in the government building.

He accused the opposition of trying to provoke violence to create an excuse for the Soviet army to move into Georgia and stem the republic’s push for independence, but said that he would not ban their protests or order the television center to be stormed.

At the television center across town, red-eyed national guard members maintaining their vigil against possible attack for the third night in a row said that they were unconcerned about Gamsakhurdia’s state of emergency.

Gela Lanchava, deputy commander of the guard, said that the state of emergency “just makes us laugh.”

“It’s idiocy to announce a state of emergency because he doesn’t have anyone to enforce it,” he said, estimating that 50% of the police and most national guardsmen back the opposition.

Talks between Gamsakhurdia’s backers and the opposition have led nowhere, however. On Tuesday the Georgian president rejected his opponents’ latest demands--that he send home the crowds of supporters bused in from the provinces, call a special session of Parliament for Thursday and allow independent television in the republic.

According to the Tass news agency, the commander of Central Asian forces for the Soviet army ordered troops stationed in Tadzhikistan to refrain from involvement in the republic’s political conflict.

Three main opposition parties--the Democratic Party of Tadzhikistan, the Islamic Party of Rebirth and the Rastokhez popular movement--denounced Monday’s leadership changes as “a reactionary coup.” They called on Tadzhiks to stage a campaign of civil disobedience until the conservative regime is forced out.

In another corner of the Soviet Union, conflict continued in the republic of Moldova.

Ethnic Russians and Ukrainians opposed to independence for the predominantly Romanian republic have been blocking railway tracks into eastern Moldova for more than a month.

Despite a decision Saturday by the self-proclaimed Republic of Dniester to lift the blockade in eastern Moldova, the pro-Moscow separatists continued to block the tracks to press demands for independence.

Goldberg reported from Tbilisi, and Williams from Moscow.