2 Sides Clash in Soviet Georgia; 1 Slain

Violence again erupted Saturday in Soviet Georgia when forces loyal to the republic’s president clashed with opposition protesters throughout the morning on the main street of the capital, and one person was shot dead and more than 80 wounded.

President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, whose policies and authoritarian leadership style are at the root of the ongoing political strife, called the republic’s Parliament into emergency session later in the day to discuss the situation, as his opponents have demanded.

Gamsakhurdia’s allies and foes immediately blamed each other for the clashes on Tbilisi’s chief thoroughfare, Rustaveli Prospekt, but the bloodshed was only the latest violence in a bitter political feud that has gone on for more than a month.

According to a statement from Gamsakhurdia’s office, bands of armed followers of Irakli Tsereteli and other opposition leaders began to fire on thousands of Gamsakhurdia’s supporters ringing the Parliament at about 2 a.m. and made the first of three attempts to storm it.

At 4 a.m., the president’s adversaries supposedly opened fire from neighboring buildings on the Parliament building, called Government House, where Gamsakhurdia has been staying for the last several weeks.

The opposition faction gave a totally contradictory version of events. According to David Nadiradze, a member of the ragtag coalition opposed to Gamsakhurdia, elite anti-riot police, familiarly known as the OMON, attacked anti-presidential forces at about 8 a.m. and killed one man, identified only as Chevashvili.

Members of the Greens Party said that Gamsakhurdia backers, armed with sticks and rocks and backed up by fire engines and armored vehicles, tried to break up opposition demonstrators and that sometime after 7:30 a.m. soldiers shot at the protesters with automatic weapons.

Some in Tbilisi said the soldiers opened fire when opposition demonstrators tried to erect barricades on Rustaveli Prospekt.

Russian evening television news reported from Tbilisi that the violence erupted after two rival crowds formed--one of many thousands of people who support Gamsakhurdia, the other against him. Some of the president’s foes managed to break into the Parliament building on Rustaveli Prospekt, which was being protected by pro-Gamsakhurdia forces, the TV news said.

Tensions skyrocketed with the arrival of the OMON units, who fired into the air and started a panic, the Russian television correspondent reported. People fought with stones and sticks, and about two hours later gunfire resumed, with the opposition supporters now the direct target of the units loyal to Gamsakhurdia, the TV said.

Gamsakhurdia, a longtime militant for Georgian independence, became the first popularly elected president of the Caucasus Mountain republic with a landslide victory at the polls in May. His opponents cite his banning of dissenting publications and the imprisonment of some opposition figures to buttress their charge that he is rapidly creating a dictatorship for himself.

Elsewhere, about 40 rockets were fired from the Azerbaijani city of Agdam into the Armenian village of Khramort in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Soviet Azerbaijan, the commandant’s office reported. The official Tass news agency said the situation in the area had escalated to the “critical point.”

Six houses were damaged in the rocket attack, but there were no injuries, Tass said. Near the village of Azokh, the body of an Armenian killed by automatic weapons fire was found.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, the leaders of the three newly independent Baltic states and their foreign ministers met to discuss the withdrawal of units of the Soviet armed forces still based in the republics and their future relations with Moscow.

According to the Baltfax news agency, a document prepared for the meeting calls for the withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia by Dec. 1. However, Baltfax said the document could not be officially adopted by the Baltic leaders for lack of time.