MOSCOW: The fragile former Soviet republic of Georgia entered one of its gravest political crises since independence on Thursday when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets and thronged outside the parliament, forcing President Eduard Shevardnadze to sack his government in an attempt to appease them.

The crisis erupted suddenly after a heavy-handed raid by the security services on Tuesday on an independent television station in the capital, Tbilisi.

It ignited long-simmering anger at the poverty, corruption and feebleness that have characterised the republic since Mr Shevardnadze was re-elected two years ago.

The raid on the Rustavi-2 station, ostensibly to investigate tax-dodging, was seen as a government attempt to silence an influential critic. Thousands of students took to the streets, baying for government resignations.

Rustavi-2 is extremely popular. Georgia was thrust into national mourning in July when the station’s most famous broadcaster, Georgi Saaya, was shot dead in circumstances which have yet to be explained.

Mr Shevardnadze went on national television on Wednes-day night to assure the public that media freedoms were inviolable.

“There is no threat to freedom of speech in Georgia,” he declared.

But despite initially resisting calls for the resignation of his interior minister and the security service chiefs, and threatening to resign himself, he was forced to dismiss the entire cabinet. He said the action was “based on the situation taking shape in the parliament and beyond its walls”.

As thousands of students thronged outside the parliament, its Speaker, Zurab Zhvania, a rival of Mr Shevardnadze, told MPs: “Our task now is to ease tension in the city and prompt the demonstrators to disperse.”

The crisis is the most serious in years. It caps a tumultuous month which has brought fighting in and around the breakaway region of Abkhazia and tension with Russia over the presence of Chechen guerrillas in the Pankisi Gorge region, on the border with war-ravaged Chechnya.

The flare-up in Abkhazia led to claims in Tbilisi that Russia was seeking to destabilise Georgia while the world was preoccupied with the war in Afghanistan. It also highlighted the impotence of Mr Shevardn-adze’s government in dealing with major domestic issues, and increased the public discontent with him.

There was no suggestion that the crisis was engineered from outside, although the Shevardnadze camp will be quick to blame Moscow.

Georgia and Russia have had frosty relations in recent years, Tbilisi bridling at what it sees as Moscow’s attempt to reassert its influence in the Caucasus.

Thursday’s demonstrations brought an offer by the security minister, Vakhtang Kutatela-dze, to resign, but the opposition also demanded the head of the interior minister, Kakha Targamadze, and the prosecutor general, Gii Meparishvili.

Mr Shevardnadze vowed to quit if they went. On Thursday night the whole cabinet had all gone, but the president was still there.

He has successfully applied such tactics before, threatening to resign in order to stay in office, but observers believe that this time he faces a more serious challenge and may not appreciate the scale of the dissatisfaction with his rule.

Thousands of students remained on the streets and outside the parliament on Thursday night, clearly not satisfied with the cabinet’s removal and calling for the president’s resignation. Mr Shevardnadze was due to appear on television for the second night running. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.