Eurasia Press & News
TBILISI
Georgia’s opposition agreed to talks with the government yesterday after month-long street protests spilled over into violence in the former Soviet republic, the focus of tensions between the West and Russia. The agreement followed the intervention of Georgia’s influential Orthodox Church leader and an appeal from the European Union to defuse tensions in the country, which is hosting NATO military exercises to the consternation of neighbouring Russia.
Opposition leaders demanding the resignation of President Mikheil Saakashvili said representatives would meet parliament speaker David Bakradze for “preparatory” talks. “This meeting should very quickly prepare a meeting with the president,” opposition leader Salome Zurabishvili said.
The opposition says Saakashvili should quit over his record on democracy and a disastrous war with Russia last year, when Moscow crushed a Georgian assault on the breakaway pro-Russian region of South Ossetia.
A brief, bloodless mutiny at a tank base outside Tbilisi on Tuesday, and clashes between police and protesters at a police base on Wednesday that injured 28 people, have raised fears of a wider anti-government rebellion.
Georgian Orthodox Church Patriarch Ilia II warned after the violence that the situation was “in danger of exploding”.
The opposition said it had cancelled plans to widen the roadblocks from Tbilisi to the main east-west highway. The meeting looked likely to go ahead late yesterday.
