Georgian Regime Seems Shaken as Warfare Flares

With 28 people reported killed Tuesday in just the last day of fighting, ethnic warfare is flaring again in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, so intensely that it appears to be shaking Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s new regime.

Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister who helped end the Cold War and then returned home this spring to rule his native land, has denied he is engineering the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, a breakaway enclave.

At a government meeting Tuesday night, he said he “does not control the situation in South Ossetia,” according to Kavinform, a news agency specializing in the Caucasus mountain region. The news agency said political insiders expect that either Shevardnadze or his defense minister will resign.

The Georgian rocket and shell attacks on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was only one of several ethnic conflicts across the former Soviet Union that all seemed to be heating up at once.

In Tajikistan, a country of 5 million people that borders China, 21 people were reported killed Tuesday after two days of shootouts between supporters and opponents of President Rakhman Nabiyev. Tajikistan has been racked by clashes between Nabiyev’s old-style regime and a coalition of reformers and Muslim activists.

Apparently fearing an increase in ethnic violence, about 20,000 Russians emigrated from Tajikistan in May, the news agency Interfax said.

Tension also remained high in Moldova, the tiny former republic bordering Romania. The majority of the Moldovan Cabinet submitted its resignation Tuesday and appeared to receive only encouragement for the move from President Mircea Snegur.

Moldova, like Georgia, is caught up in ethnic warfare because a region populated by minorities is pushing to secede. In Moldova’s case, they are largely ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Gagauz who feel oppressed by the ethnic Romanian majority.

In recent weeks, the Russian army has begun to intervene in Moldova to defend ethnic Russians there. Gen. Pavel Grachev, Russia’s new defense minister, said in an interview published Tuesday that he cannot stop Russian soldiers from defending their brethren.

“There are very many Russians on the territory of Moldova, and Russia must defend its citizens abroad as well,” Grachev told the popular Nezavisimaya Gazeta, or Independent Newspaper.

Russian troops have not been involved in the South Ossetia conflict, but those stationed near Tskhinvali went on alert Tuesday in case of attack and warned both sides that they would fight back hard if hit. Russian Television reported that Georgian tanks flanked Tskhinvali on three sides and that Georgian militants had been pelting the city with artillery and rockets for more than a day.

South Ossetia is a pocket of about 100,000 people who speak a Persian-based language. It incurred Georgian wrath in late 1990 when it declared that it wanted to break away and unite with North Ossetia, an enclave of Russia.

In the past year and a half, attacks on Tskhinvali have become almost routine. Former Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was deposed last winter after a brief civil war, tried to abolish the region altogether.