Loyalists Battle to Crack Rebel Siege in Georgia

Fresh fighting broke out in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Sunday when supporters of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia attempted to lift a rebel siege of the republic’s Parliament. Gamsakhurdia continued to defy demands for his resignation.

Government forces, taking the offensive after weeklong battering by the rebels, claimed to have regained control of the capital’s main square, but the rebels said they managed to occupy part of the complex of government buildings held by Gamsakhurdia supporters.

“The fighting resumed after Zviad Gamsakhurdia rejected the demand of the opposition that he resign,” Radio Moscow reported Sunday night from Tbilisi, adding that an agreement for a cease-fire had reduced but not halted the fighting. “The Government House and nearby buildings are on fire,” Radio Moscow said.

Neither side appeared Sunday to have sufficient strength to defeat the other decisively, according to reports from Tbilisi; both were attempting to recruit more supporters.

Gamsakhurdia, looking pale and haggard as he encountered Western journalists outside his bunker at government headquarters, replied, “Never!” when asked if he would resign as the rebels were demanding.

He brushed aside as inconsequential the defections of several of his ministers to the rebels over the weekend, but he arrested one of the defectors, Nodar Georgadze, a deputy defense minister and the leader of a militia of several hundred Afgantsi, battle-hardened veterans of the Soviet Union’s 10-year war in Afghanistan.

Neutral until now, the Afgantsi might join the rebels, and their participation could quickly change the tide of the battle.

The cease-fire, agreed upon Saturday, had remained only a hope, little more than a statement of intent, as both the government forces and the rebels tried through the day to maneuver into better positions for the next round of fighting and prevent the others from outflanking them.

Clashes began to intensify late Sunday evening, according to the Tass news agency, which described the battle for Gamsakhurdia’s headquarters as “senseless, bringing only more death, damage and destruction.”

“The center of Tbilisi is in ruins,” Tass said in a brief dispatch from the city. “Hundreds of people are fleeing to safety from the areas devastated by the fighting.

“Crime and violence are on the rise. Cases of looting and seizure of state-owned and private vehicles at gunpoint have been reported. The Georgian police are idle, having decided to wait and see.”

The official death toll remains at 51 for the week, according to reports from Tbilisi, but Russian journalists believe that it might now be twice that.

Gamsakhurdia, an ardent Georgian nationalist who was imprisoned for his political activities during the Soviet era, was elected president by an overwhelming majority last spring. But the opposition has accused him of acting like a dictator since then. Still, he appears to retain the support of many urban workers and of most Georgians outside the capital.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, virtually the whole Caucasus region--the republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as adjacent areas of Russia--is in turmoil as struggles for power rage in the political vacuum and old feuds flare.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed Armenia enclave in Azerbaijan, 25 people were reported killed over the weekend, according to local officials, as skirmishes flared all around the district in the wake of the withdrawal of Soviet peacekeeping troops from the region. Thirty people were reported wounded.

Although there was no confirmation of the number of deaths in the region, commanders of the Soviet forces said that, even as they pulled out of their positions late last week, they could see heavily armed members of the Armenian and Azerbaijani militias moving into them.

“There is going to be a war here, a real war,” a Soviet officer told a Radio Rossiya correspondent as his troops loaded their armored personnel carrier for the journey home. “We have been the only barrier between these militias, and once we go, they will probably fight to the death.”

The troops from the Soviet Interior Ministry are being withdrawn as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union; most will be demobilized, but some may become part of the new Russian or Ukrainian national guards.

Among the dead on Sunday was a prominent Russian radio journalist, Leonid Lazarevich, who was shot in the stomach while covering fighting near the Azerbaijani village of Kyarkidzhakan near Stepanakert, the district capital. Lazarevich, a correspondent for the popular Radio Mayak, was the fifth journalist to be killed in Nagorno-Karabakh this year.

With Azerbaijan determined to create its own army in the wake of the Soviet collapse, Armenians fear an attempt could be made soon to overrun the area.

Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan met in Moscow on Sunday with Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian president, to seek his assistance. Armenia and Russia signed a treaty Sunday regulating their relations, and Ter-Petrosyan said he hopes that it will also help stabilize the troubled Caucasus region.

Yeltsin, who tried to mediate the conflict last autumn, promised to bring the issue before the presidents of former Soviet republics that now belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States when they meet today.

Azerbaijanis voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to confirm their republic’s earlier declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.

Although the matter is now just a legal technicality, President Ayaz Mutalibov had sought a convincing turnout to strengthen his popular mandate. A former Communist Party official, he had initially supported the conservative coup d’etat against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in August and has tried since then to improve his credentials as a democrat.

Voters in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan also endorsed its declaration of independence and elected Islam Karimov as president. He had originally been elected president in March, 1990, by Uzbekistan’s Parliament.

Karimov, another former Communist Party leader who has held onto his post despite the party’s collapse, had also wanted to win a popular mandate while opposition forces were still relatively weak; he was nominated by the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, which is based largely on the old Communist Party.

He faced only one challenger, Mohammed Solikh, a poet, who is chairman of Erk, a new moderately nationalist party. Birlik, the main Uzbek nationalist movement, was unable to nominate a candidate because it is not registered formally as a political party.

Karimov had campaigned on the basis of ensuring true independence for Uzbekistan and providing “social protection” from what could be the devastating impact in Central Asia of Russia’s economic reforms, particularly the three-fold price increases planned for later this week.