TBILISI, Nov 13: A top US diplomat said on Tuesday he expected Georgia to lift a state of emergency within days.
Matthew Bryza, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, was speaking after a meeting with government officials.
He later met Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for at least two hours to repeat calls from Washington for an immediate end to emergency rule, a US embassy spokesman said.
The state of emergency, which bans public demonstrations and independent newscasts, was imposed after a police crackdown on anti-government protesters last week.
Bryza told reporters he was confident the government would follow through on promises to end emergency rule before its 15-day mandate expires on Nov 22.
“It sounds like the state of emergency will be lifted in the next two or three days, in fact I think on the 16th,” he said.
Bryza said that while recent events had caused concern, they did not erase the democratic progress Georgia had made since 2003.
“We should keep in mind that despite the current tensions, what has happened here in the last four years is positive, is in fact remarkable and is only the beginning of a story,” he said.
Saakashvili imposed the state of emergency six days ago after police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of protestors.
They had gathered for a sixth day to call for the president’s resignation and early parliamentary elections.
Saakashvili later announced a snap presidential poll for Jan 5, but his imposition of the state of emergency drew widespread condemnation from Western allies.
They have backed his strongly pro-Western government since he came to power after the 2003 pro-democracy Rose Revolution.
Saakashvili has said that last week’s unrest was part of an attempt masterminded by Russia to overthrow his government, a claim denied by Moscow.
On Monday, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally told him at a summit last year that Russia wanted to partition Georgia through its support for the country’s rebel region of Abkhazia.
“Russian President Putin said to me that Russia will create a new Cyprus in Georgia,” he told a meeting with teachers that was broadcast on state television.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey seized its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed at union with Greece.
Georgia on Monday claimed Russia had moved new military hardware and 200 more troops into Abkhazia, where about 2,000 Russian soldiers are already deployed as peacekeepers. Moscow denied the claim.
Bryza said he did not believe Russia was seeking to take any action in Abkhazia that would threaten Georgia.
“In terms of Russia’s intentions... I would be shocked, based on our conversations with Moscow in the last few days, if there was truly something planned that would aim to destabilise Georgia,” he said.
On Monday, the coalition of opposition parties that led the anti-government protests announced that almost all of its members would support prominent businessman Levan Gachechiladze as Saakashvili’s challenger in the presidential poll.
One member of the coalition, the Labour Party, has already broken ranks and said it would present its own candidate, local news agencies reported.—AFP
