November 16, 2003	Sunday	Ramazan 20, 1424

TBILISI, Nov 15: The mass protests that have convulsed Georgia’s capital for the past week melted away on Saturday, giving a reprieve to embattled President Eduard Shevardnadze, who had warned the unrest was dragging his former Soviet republic towards civil war.

But the protesters, who have been pressing their demands for Mr Shevardnadze to resign over a parliamentary election they allege was rigged to rob them of victory, said they were not giving up.

They called on their supporters to begin a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience.

Fears remain that political turmoil in Georgia could destabilize the rest of the turbulent Caucasus region, and disrupt a US-backed pipeline being built across Georgia to pipe crude oil from the landlocked Caspian Sea to world markets.

The unrest reached a dramatic climax on Friday when an estimated 15,000 people, in the biggest political demonstration here in a decade, marched on the president’s offices in the centre of the capital, Tbilisi.

But Mr Shevardnadze — who is due to step down when his second term ends in 2005 — appeared to have faced down the protesters, for now at least. He was boosted by support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he spoke twice on the telephone in a 24-hour period.

The opposition shifted its focus, calling on government employees to stay away from work, for people to stop paying bills and for supporters to picket government offices to paralyse the work of the state.

“Yesterday, we showed (Shevardnadze) that this was the people asking the president to resign, but if they do not listen to that then we will use another approach,” said Giorgi Arveladze, a senior figure in the opposition National Movement party.

“We will continue until we crack the government,” Mr Arveladze vowed.

Georgian television reported that hospital staff in the western city of Zugdidi briefly went on strike and that teachers in nearby Abasha were planning to stay off work. Elsewhere, most people turned up for work as usual.

There were also minor protests in Zugdidi and Abasha, and a picket in Telavi, in the east of the country. In Poti, on the Black Sea coast, about 1,000 opposition supporters turned up for a rally.

But on Saturday afternoon, the square in front of the parliament building in Tbilisi — scene of daily protests for the past seven days — was eerily quiet. Buses that protesters had used to block off the adjacent Rustaveli Prospect had been removed.

The only sign the protesters had been there was the banners they had left hanging on the building and slogans scrawled in chalk on the pavement.

People who had joined the protests in the hope of ousting Mr Shevardnadze were in subdued mood.

“What can we do? We came out onto the streets but he did not listen,” said Yuri, a 69-year-old pensioner. “Now there is nothing left to do but wait until the presidential elections.”

Though the unrest was sparked by the Nov 2 parliamentary election, it also tapped into deep unhappiness with Shevardnadze’s rule.

The 75-year-old president is a former Soviet foreign minister who helped end the Cold War. But many Georgians blame him for rampant corruption and falling living standards.

There was a sign that the government might be preparing to make concessions to the protesters by firing some of the Shevardnadze-appointed regional governors, whom the opposition accuses of being among the chief culprits in rigging the election.

Presidential advisor Irakli Bochuridze said, however, that the sackings were “not connected in any way to the demands of the opposition”.

Interim election results give Mr Shevardnadze’s For a New Georgia party the lead, followed closely by the Revival Party of Aslan Abashidze, a regional leader who has allied himself with the Georgian president. Opposition parties shared the rest of the vote between them.

Opposition and international observers have denounced the vote as a travesty. —AFP