Georgia bloodlessly ousts leader

Once hailed as a savior, then reviled as corrupt, a former top Soviet official quits amid protests.

TBILISI, Georgia - President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned Sunday, ending his 11-year rule over a country that had grown to revile him and handing opposition leaders exactly what they wanted: a government takeover without bloodshed, inspired and driven by Georgians themselves.

Fireworks exploded overhead and the air was filled with cheers, whistling and the mad honking of car horns. People hugged, kissed and shouted into their cell phones. They waved flags and held children over their heads.

"I see that this could not have ended bloodlessly, and I would have had to exercise my power," said Shevardnadze, 75, referring to his futile declaration of a state of emergency after protesters forced him to flee the Parliament building in this former Soviet republic on Saturday.

"I have never betrayed my country, and so it is better that the president resigns," he said.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the main opposition leader, said that new parliamentary and presidential elections would be held and that there should be no retribution against Shevardnadze.

The resignation ended the career of the 75-year-old leader credited with helping to end the Cold War. Holed up in his presidential residence on the outskirts of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, Shevardnadze had been told that tens of thousands of protesters were preparing to march to his home.

His only recourse was to rely on the Georgian military to quell the protests, an option that might have plunged the Caucasus nation into civil war.

But whether Shevardnadze had the backing of his own military was in doubt. Saakashvili and other opposition leaders said many Georgian soldiers had abandoned support for the president. When protesters stormed the Parliament building, scores of riot police simply let them enter.

Shevardnadze was also put under pressure during the weekend in telephone calls - one from President Vladimir Putin of Russia and one, jointly, from Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Copying Czechoslovakia's term for its liberation from communism in 1989, Saakashvili called this Georgia's "velvet revolution." Throwing flowers at the joyous crowd, he also called it "the revolution of roses" and praised Shevardnadze's resignation.

"By his resignation, he avoided spilling blood in the country," Saakashvili said. "History will judge him kindly."

Nino Burdzhanadze, speaker of the Parliament who helped Saaskashvili lead protests against Shevardnadze, became acting president. Under the constitution, she will remain the country's interim leader for 45 days, after which an election will be held.

Though a small country of 4.4-million, Georgia has immense strategic importance to the United States. The route of a $3-billion pipeline under construction that will carry Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan snakes through Georgia. The United States is relying on that pipeline to reduce its reliance on Mideast oil.

Partly because of the esteem in which Shevardnadze is held in Washington, his country became one of the leading recipients of American assistance, with $1-billion flowing in over 10 years. U.S. Special Forces remain stationed in the country, training Georgian troops to fight suspected Arab terrorists who until recently were sheltered in the Pankisi Gorge, just south of the war-battered Russian republic of Chechnya.

Georgia is just as strategically vital to Moscow, which last year accused Shevardnadze of giving Chechen guerrillas refuge in the gorge. The Kremlin sent Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to Tbilisi on Sunday to assist in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.

The trigger for the almost daily anti-Shevardnadze rallies was the Nov. 2 parliamentary election, widely condemned as rigged. However, discontent has been welling up for years.

A thriving industrial and tourism hub during the Soviet era, Georgia became one of the poorest ex-Soviet republics during Shevardnadze's presidency. Retirees scrape by on pensions of the equivalent of $6 a month. According to World Bank data, more than half of the country lives in poverty. Average wages are about $20 a month, and an estimated 20 percent of Georgians are unemployed.

Shevardnadze also was unable to stem corruption, which had become a way of life. Bribes usually are required to start a business, get a decent job or enroll in a good school. Transparency International, a watchdog group, lists Georgia as the world's sixth-most corrupt nation, ahead of only Myanmar, Paraguay, Haiti, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

Shevardnadze's inability to improve living standards and wipe out corruption made him a hated man for many Georgians - a sharp turnabout from the early 1990s, when they regarded him as their savior.

Born during the rule of a fellow Georgian, Josef Stalin, Shevardnadze rose up the ranks of Soviet Georgia's Communist Party, working first as a teacher in the republic's Communist Youth League and later becoming a lawmaker in its Supreme Soviet.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev named Shevardnadze as Andrei Gromyko's replacement as foreign minister. Shevardnadze became a household name in the West, and has always been hailed in the United States as one of the key players in the collapse of Communism.

In 1992, a year after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Shevardnadze returned to Georgia to become its head of state. Georgia's early years of independence were its most tumultuous, when war erupted in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and criminal gangs freely roamed. Georgians still praise Shevardnadze for stewarding the nation through those chaotic years.

Though the ranks of his opponents swelled in recent years, Shevardnadze repeatedly said he would not step down before 2005, when Georgia's constitution bars him from seeking a third term.

However, after the Nov. 2 election, opposition figures led by Saakashvili and Burdzhanadze accused Shevardnadze's administration of rigging the contest to ensure Shevardnadze's For a New Georgia Party kept control of Parliament. They amassed thousands of protesters who appeared on the streets of Tbilisi virtually daily. On Thursday, when the government validated For a New Georgia's victory in the elections, large convoys of protesters from Georgia's provinces began streaming into Tbilisi.

On Saturday, as Shevardnadze was preparing to speak before the new Parliament, demonstrators stormed into the chamber. Shevardnadze's bodyguards whisked him away.

Shevardnadze declared a state of emergency and gave protesters 48 hours to leave Parliament and the State Chancellery, Shevardnadze's presidential office building. By Sunday afternoon, Saakashvili had appeared at Shevardnadze's home to issue his own ultimatum. If Shevardnadze did not resign, thousands of demonstrators would march up to his house, Saakashvili warned.

Shevardnadze continued to hold talks with Saakashvili, Ivanov and another opposition leader, Zurab Zhvania. When the talks were over, Shevardnadze met with reporters outside his home and announced he had resigned.

Asked where he planned to go, Shevardnadze replied, "Home."

It was unclear whether Shevardnadze remained in Georgia late Sunday. Burdzhanadze said she believed he had left the country. However, a spokesman for Shevardnadze told Reuters that he remained at his home outside Tbilisi.

- Information from the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Washington Post was used in this report.

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