GEORGIA: The breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia defiantly voted for a new president yesterday, injecting further tension into relations between Georgia and its former colonial master, Russia.
Five candidates are vying to succeed Mr Vladislav Ardzinba, the leader since Abkhazia declared itself independent more than a decade ago.
However, its independence is not recognised internationally, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, elected this year after a bloodless revolution, has dismissed the vote as illegitimate.
But all candidates and voters were united in proclaiming their unrecognised Black Sea state independent.
Mr Saakashvili has pledged to return the mountainous slither of land bordering Russia to central rule.
Reports suggest more than 60 per cent of the 120,000 people registered for the vote took part.
"Abkhazians are voting for their future of their country so the country can be independent and the people can be free," said Mr Sergei Bagapsh, main rival to Russia-backed candidate Raul Khadzhimba, after slotting his voting slip into a transparent ballot box in the capital Sukhumi, where turnout seemed high.
Mr Khadzhimba is tipped to win the poll, which Abkhazians tout as their first democratic election, since there was only one candidate in the previous election in 1999.
The poll was certain to increase a tangle of tensions in the Caucasus region, which Russian President Vladimir Putin considers strategically crucial.
West-leaning Georgia accuses Moscow of double standards in supporting Abkhazian separatists while cracking down on its own rebels in Chechnya, a region Russia says is on the frontline of the war against terrorism.
Russia has given three-quarters of Abkhazians passports and pays local pensions. A meeting between Mr Khadzhimba and Mr Putin, widely displayed on the Abkhazian candidate's campaign posters, rankles with the Georgians.
But Tbilisi pledged not to disrupt the poll: "We do not intend to raise obstacles (to this election). The main thing is that these elections are not legitimate," Georgian State Minister Mr Goga Khaindrava told Ekho Moskvy radio yesterday.
Abkhazia has enjoyed de facto independence since local forces, aided by Russian volunteers and weapons from the ex-Soviet military, defeated the Georgian army 11 years ago.
Local media reported a mortar attack in an ethnic Georgian village yesterday but Russian and UN peacekeepers say that, despite Mr Saakashvili's fiery rhetoric, the ceasefire line has quietened down since he came to power, and clashes are rare.
The legacy of fighting in the eerily deserted region, abandoned by most of the ethnic Georgian half of its population after the war, is everywhere.
Scars from bullets and heavy weapons disfigure houses in Sukhumi. Once grand buildings in what was a Soviet resort stand open to the sky, their ground floors rank with weeds.
Outside the capital, roads are largely empty. Cows laze on tarmac still pitted from the treads of tanks, blinking stupidly at the occasional passing car.
The region has suffered economic collapse and gets by on an annual budget of a mere $15 million, but officials press on with their dream of independence.
"Other countries have split apart - the Czech republic and Slovakia divorced peacefully - why can't Abkhazia be a normal free country?" asked Mr Khadzhimba,.
Ethnic Georgian voters seemed largely to support such calls, saying they were fed up with struggling to survive in depressed rural areas.