Rebel Claims Azerbaijani Presidency : Caucasus: Surat Guseinov says ‘the people’ support his bid for power. His forces are now camped outside the capital.

Azerbaijani rebel leader Surat Guseinov claimed the powers of the presidency Monday, bringing Azerbaijan’s newborn democracy to the brink of collapse.

“I am relying on the support of the people, who demand that I march on Baku,” declared the former colonel, who has been threatening to seize the capital unless Azerbaijan’s first democratically elected president resigns. “I am obliged to take all responsibilities and powers on myself.”

President Abulfez Elchibey quietly fled Baku at 4 a.m. Friday for his hometown in Nakhichevan, a remote area near the Iranian border, but he has refused to resign. On Monday, via a Turkish news agency, Elchibey appealed to the world to help his country avert civil war.

Guseinov’s army, swelled by defectors from the national forces, has for a week been steadily advancing on Baku, a city of 1.5 million on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Government troops have made no effort to stop him.

By Monday night, Guseinov’s soldiers were camped about nine miles from central Baku in the city’s undefended suburbs, and there were reports of government soldiers and rebel troops shaking hands and embracing.

“There will be no bloodshed in Baku,” Guseinov told Ostankino Television. “I take full responsibility for this.”

But the Interfax news agency reported that Elchibey’s party, the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, said that one local party leader was killed Monday by Guseinov’s supporters in a southwestern suburb of Baku and that two more were killed near the town of Shemakha. The report could not be independently verified Monday evening.

Azerbaijan is an oil-rich, mostly Muslim nation of 7 million that has been battered in the last year by internal rebellion, economic hardship and political chaos. Earlier this year, it also suffered significant territorial losses in its five-year war over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“People are dissatisfied and disappointed by the activities of the Popular Front,” said political analyst Arif Guseinov, who is not related to the rebel commander. “People are looking for a Daddy-Czar to come and save them. It is a good time for such shady figures as Guseinov.”

Guseinov’s announcement that he wants the presidency leaves three rivals for control:

* Elchibey, a former dissident who spent two years in prison before being elected president by a landslide a year ago. His policies were overtly pro-Western and anti-Iranian. Supporters said he fled to prevent more bloodshed and save his own life.

* Geidar Aliyev, who ran Azerbaijan’s KGB and Communist Party before being named to the Soviet Politburo by Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1983. In 1987, he was sacked by reformist Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Aliyev has since made an extraordinary political comeback, culminating in his election last Tuesday as Speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament. On Friday, Aliyev announced that he was assuming presidential powers in Elchibey’s absence, as the Azerbaijani constitution permits.

* Guseinov, a pro-Communist warlord who runs Azerbaijan’s largest wool concern and who is reported to be a millionaire. Once Elchibey’s special commander in Nagorno-Karabakh, he was fired in February and accused of treason in the face of Armenian successes.

At a press conference at his headquarters in Gyandzha on Monday, Guseinov said the situation does not permit the head of Parliament--Aliyev--to run the country, and he said he would take presidential power into his own hands.

When a journalist pointed out the constitutional provisions for the parliamentary leader to become president, Guseinov replied that he saw no force that could stop him, Interfax said.

Sergei Loiko, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this report.