TBILISI, Nov 14: Thousands of Georgians, watched warily by troops, surrounded the heavily guarded offices of embattled President Eduard Shevardnadze in a human chain on Friday and demanded he step down.

Up to 20,000 protesters, ignoring the veteran president’s emotional appeal to stay at home, responded to opposition calls to take the dispute over the November 2 election result to the streets and press Shevardnadze to resign.

The protests, the biggest in Georgia in the decade since the end of a bitter civil war, were watched anxiously by Western governments and oil firms hoping for a return to stability to permit construction of a key oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean.

The protesters appeared determined but peaceful, hundreds dancing to an impromptu folk concert outside parliament square.

Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili, stepping up the pressure on the president, demanded “total civil disobedience”.

“This man stole everything from us and he is not going to take notice of his own people...Never in Georgia were the people so mobilised against the government,” he said.

“I call on the army not to act on the unlawful commander-in-chief’s illegal orders,” he said, and urged state workers to strike and police not to go to work.

As evening fell, thousands formed a human chain around the presidential office building, a Soviet monolith with a yellowish facade. Interior ministry troops watched as protesters chanted “step down” and “traitor”.

Earlier, witnesses saw armoured vehicles, trucks and buses with soldiers in body armour outside the interior ministry. —Reuters