Shooting Halts in Tbilisi; Official Accuses Baker

Fighting halted Thursday between militants loyal to President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and opposition forces besieging the Parliament building, an official said. But no formal cease-fire was reported.

More than 40 people have been reported killed and 260 wounded in five days of fighting in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s Foreign Minister Murman Omanidze accused Secretary of State James A. Baker III of encouraging the political violence raging here.

He said Baker’s criticism of the newly independent republic stems from unreliable information.

His Dec. 20 letter to Baker was released by Georgia’s Information Office in Washington, apparently in response to a U.S. decision to withhold diplomatic recognition of Georgia and five other former Soviet republics pending improvement of their human rights, economic and political records.

The letter was prompted by a Dec. 12 speech by Baker at Princeton University, describing the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Clearly, other governments--for example, Georgia--are showing already that communism can be replaced by governments that are authoritarian and equally undeserving of our acceptance or support,” Baker said at the time.

Omanidze said he was “astonished” that Baker was ignoring Georgia’s democratic reforms.

Georgia is the only one of the 12 former Soviet republics that has not joined the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

Earlier Thursday, gun battles raged in Tbilisi and both sides were pressing for more weapons from the army, which so far has taken no part in the fighting.

Nodar Alakhadze, a spokesman for the Georgian Mission in Moscow, said later in the day that “the two sides have stopped shooting. Everything is headed toward stabilization.”

The fighting pits Gamsakhurdia loyalists against the opposition, which accuses him of behaving dictatorially and demands he step down.