Tbilisi Tries to Go About Its Business : Georgia: A march by 5,000 Gamsakhurdia backers is halted by gunshots. But there is no groundswell of support.

Angry demonstrators marched here Friday, demanding the return of Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. But there was little other overt support for the ousted leader on the second day of his attempted return to power.

The march of 5,000 Gamsakhurdia supporters was stopped when 40 masked men fired shots into the air and prevented the demonstrators from reaching the city’s center. But this was the only shooting reported in a day when schools were open, most Georgians went to work and remarkably few armed checkpoints were seen.

Knots of anxious citizens gathered on many of the city’s wide boulevards in the brilliant winter sunshine to debate whether to support Gamsakhurdia or the provisional government established by the military council that ousted Gamsakhurdia after two weeks of fighting that gutted Tbilisi’s grand state buildings.

“Gamsakhurdia represents legitimacy, but nobody will support him if he tries to use arms to split the country,” said economist Hushangi Jangashili, debating with a crowd of 100 people before the blackened pillars of the old Government House, from which Gamsakhurdia escaped Jan. 6 after withstanding a siege of his bunker.

Gamsakhurdia returned to western Georgia earlier this week to rally his supporters from his hometown in Zugdidi, reportedly appealing to fellow Georgians in the Megrilia region to stand by him in a new state of Western Georgia.

But in Tbilisi, his supporters refused to believe that he could have made such a call--declaring a civil war and splitting the nation.

“There is a flood of lies,” Louisa Davitaya said, spontaneously presenting a visitor with a copy of the former dissident poet’s writings. “We are fighting for independence. That’s why he got 87% of the vote for president in May. Gamsakhurdia will not get support for dividing the country.”

Georgians say that Gamsakhurdia’s popularity has fallen sharply since his election because of his tendency to act as a dictator. The press and television that he muzzled as president are ironically now freely reporting his rebellion in western Georgia, Georgians said.

“The new government is trying to smooth things over, whereas he always aggravated things,” said Irama Dvakshvili, taking her daughter for a traditional Tbilisi evening walk along the crowded main Rustaveli Avenue. There gutted buildings are being cleared, restaurants are again doing a thriving trade and an art exhibition had been organized.

But anxious faces in the crowds show that, below the surface, all is far from well. The principal problem cited by ordinary people is the economic crisis gripping the former Soviet Union, compounded in Tbilisi by reports that Gamsakhurdia has cut rail supply lines from the West.

Such hardships are deepening pessimism in this usually exuberant nation despite a growing sense here that Gamsakhurdia will fail in his challenge to the new government.

Led by Tengiz Sigua as prime minister but still under the military council that overthrew Gamsakhurdia, the government now claims the tacit support of former Soviet military units, estimated to number 200,000 men, that remain in the republic.

Although Sigua reportedly has given Gamsakhurdia a week to leave Georgia and avoid further bloodshed, the ousted president is reported to be mustering armed followers in the west.

Georgian officials in Moscow said they believe up to a fifth of the country supports Gamsakhurdia. “Some conditions exist for a civil war. If it comes to fighting, the consequences are unimaginable,” deputy Georgian mission chief Georgy Volski said.

Volski said Tengiz Kitovani, the National Guard commander whose forces back the military council, had sent a few troops to occupy key positions west of Tbilisi to head off any Gamsakhurdia advance.

Officials said Gamsakhurdia had effective control of radio broadcasts in the west. This could further strengthen his position in an area that voted overwhelmingly for him as president last May.

Special correspondent Pope, who reports for The Times from Ankara, Turkey, is on assignment in Tbilisi.