RUSSIA: More than 10,000 Georgians massed in the capital of the restive Adzharia region yesterday to demand the resignation of renegade local leader Mr Aslan Abashidze after he rejected initial government demands to step down and defuse the danger of civil war.
After clashes with pro-Abashidze militiamen left several protesters badly injured, Georgian president Mr Mikhail Saakashvili said he would exert direct control over the province until elections for a new leader were held. Mr Abashidze has ruled the autonomous Black Sea region like a fiefdom for 14 years.
Mr Saakashvili, who ousted veteran president Mr Eduard Shevardnadze in the "rose revolution" last November, offered safe passage to Mr Abashidze and asked the United States and Russia to give him refuge.
"I take upon myself full responsibility and give a guarantee of safety to Aslan Abashidze, but only if he voluntarily leaves his post," Mr Saakashvili said on national television.
"I spoke with President Putin and the White House and asked them to give political asylum to Abashidze and his family. We have not yet received an answer to that question, but we have said that we would not seek their extradition back to Georgia to stand trial."
On Sunday, Mr Saakashvili gave his long-time adversary a 10-day ultimatum to disband paramilitary groups and restore normal relations with Tbilisi.
But Mr Abashidze, who says the new regime in Tbilisi wants to destroy all political opposition, responded by declaring a state of emergency and blowing up the main bridges linking Adzharia to the rest of Georgia.
As police and officials joined the swelling ranks of protesters yesterday in Batumi, Adzharia's capital, and bus loads of other demonstrators headed for the city, senior Georgian figures said Mr Abashidze's time was running out.
"You have two or three hours to obey the president of Georgia and avoid bloodshed," Mr Vano Merabishvili, head of Georgia's Security Council, said in mid-afternoon.
Georgia's Prosecutor General, Mr Irakli Okruashvili said Mr Abashidze had a stark choice: "He can choose between the fate of Eduard Shevardnadze or that of Nicolae Ceaucescu," the Romanian dictator lynched in 1989 by his former subjects.
Mr Saakashvili also turned the screw in last night's television address, saying: "We are ready to be magnanimous in victory and forgive everything - but the time to disarm has arrived."
The Georgian leader ordered his military to reassert control over Adzharia's border with the rest of the country, and re-establish transport links largely severed when Mr Abashidze blew up the bridges and railway tracks that, he said, Tbilisi planned to use to mount an armed assault.
But as pressure grew on his isolated regime, Mr Abashidze appeared to remain defiant, pinning his hopes on diplomatic intervention from Russia, which has a military base in Adzharia and dispatched top diplomat Mr Igor Ivanov to Georgia last night.
"I have no intention of leaving Adzharia," Mr Abashidze said.
"Let's wait for Ivanov to come and discuss a range of issues to end this crisis, which occurred through no fault of our own."
Mr Ivanov, a former foreign minister, helped broker Mr Shevardnadze's resignation after massive street protests led by Mr Saakashvili.
Russia is keen to retain influence in ex-Soviet Georgia but faces pressure from a US government that backs a multi-billion-dollar pipeline intended to carry Caspian Sea oil across the country to Western markets.