Rebels Digging In to Battle Regime in Soviet Georgia : Unrest: Tension mounts as they hold the Tbilisi TV center in a standoff with President Gamsakhurdia.

With five people killed overnight, tensions in the southwest Soviet republic of Georgia approached the breaking point Wednesday as rebel national guard units dug in for a firefight.

Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in a stem-winding speech to thousands massed in front of government headquarters, made it clear he was standing fast. He repeated his customary offer to take part in negotiations.

Opposition leaders, charging the president with parlaying pro-independence and nationalistic sentiments into a personal dictatorship, called the offer hollow rhetoric.

Three policemen and two dissidents were killed in a gunfight at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, government officials said. The government said rebel national guard troops had tried to storm the main power station in Tbilisi; opposition leaders said the guardsmen had been taking one of their unit to a hospital when they were attacked by police.

Former Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua and a handful of government ministers met in the Tbilisi broadcasting center, now the freshly fortified bastion of resistance to Gamsakhurdia’s rule, and decided to try to talk to Gamsakhurdia and his entourage.

“This is the last attempt,” said the republic’s deputy prime minister and minister of finance, Guram Absandse. He said he was optimistic that normalcy could be restored.

Trouble also percolated elsewhere Wednesday on the fringes of the crumbling Soviet state:

* Armenian Prime Minister Vazguen Manukian resigned and announced he was withdrawing from the Oct. 16 presidential election. The Soviet news agency Interfax quoted Manukian as saying that the election campaign would cause instability in the republic, which on Monday declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

* In the western republic of Moldova, three people were wounded and scores arrested in the city of Dubossary after clashes between ethnic Russians and local police. Ethnic Russians, fearing discrimination by the Moldovan majority in the republic, have been attempting to set up their own breakaway Dniester republic.

In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, dozens of young men clad in olive drab military fatigues and camouflage battle dress warily kept up the guard in the TV center, the opposition headquarters. They toted weaponry ranging from AK-47 assault rifles to shotguns and hunting rifles that looked like family heirlooms. Armored personnel carriers were parked outside.

Tbilisi’s commandant, Col. Dzhemal Kutate Ladze, gave “illegal military formations” and the general public until 6 p.m. today to hand over firearms. An Interior Ministry spokesman said the order was directed at Georgian national guard units that had mutinied against the president.

Kutate also ordered everyone to carry their identity papers at all times; anyone found without them would be subject to detention by the military without an arrest warrant. All factories and offices were ordered to institute a strict pass system to allow only authorized persons to enter and leave their premises.

He also issued an order for the detention of people, including reporters, who spread “disinformation or show disrespect to the president and the government.”

Many of those who thronged Tbilisi streets to engage in or eavesdrop on passionate political debates said they feared the conflict between Gamsakhurdia and his adversaries would turn ever more violent.

“I am categorically against the use of force of diktat, “ said Zaza G. Korsaveli, a dean at the city’s Institute of Foreign Languages. “We need to settle our differences by sitting at the table to negotiate.”

In his speech, broadcast throughout the republic on government radio, Gamsakhurdia said that political strife had split his land of nearly 5.5 million people. He said he would resign, if that would bring peace and order, but he said he sees no prospect of that result.

Rustaveli Avenue, the broad thoroughfare that runs past the building that houses the Parliament and his offices, remained blocked by rows of buses and dump trucks parked there by Georgians who answered Gamsakhurdia’s call to defend his government.

A crowd of at least 5,000, reveling in sunny, warm weather, milled around the back of the building. In the courtyard, police mingled with units of the Georgian national guard that have remained loyal to the president.

Gamsakhurdia won a landslide victory in his republic’s first presidential election in May, giving him an indisputable claim to legitimacy. But his political foes say he has overstepped the bounds of his office by censuring the press and other high-handed practices.

Twenty-five opposition members of Georgia’s legislature presented Gamsakhurdia with a list of demands, including the invoking of an emergency session of Parliament, the freeing of political opponents and the dispersal of the thousands of people bused to Tbilisi to support the president.