Georgian leaders stumble on path to new polls

Georgia's new interim leadership stumbled in efforts to restore order in their volatile country yesterday when they failed to win a quorum for a parliamentary session called to resolve two key issues ahead of polls.

Deputies were due to appoint a key minister and revise the electoral code a day after Mikhail Saakashvili, clear favourite to succeed ousted president Eduard Shevardnadze, warned the country to guard against a military coup.

Western states, mindful of plans to pipe Caspian oil across Georgia to the Mediterranean, and neighbouring Russia see their interests at stake in the volatile Caucasus mountains state. Georgia was riven by civil war in the immediate post-Soviet period in the 1990s and some regions still defy Tbilisi.

Acting speaker Gigi Tsereteli suspended the parliamentary session when less than the minimum required number of deputies appeared for a vote to approve a new state minister; the second ranking official in the executive after president.

Parliament was also to alter the electoral code before early presidential elections on January 4, and confirm a partial rerun on the same day of last month's disputed parliamentary polls.

The Supreme Court ruled that the November 2 elections to parliament were tainted by fraud. Allegations of rigging by supporters of Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister hailed in the West for helping end the Cold War, triggered three weeks of protests that culminated in his resignation on Sunday.

The parties that engineered Shevardnadze's downfall, accusing him of tolerating economic collapse, corruption and poverty, named Saakashvili on Wednesday their sole candidate for presidential elections.

It remains unclear who besides the popular Saakashvili, 35, will stand. But it is clearly essential that polls be conducted quickly to avoid any suggestion of a power vacuum.

US-trained Saakashvili was the driving force behind the protests, rebaptised here the "Rose Revolution". Protesters who stormed parliament at the height of demonstrations carried roses as a symbol of non-violence.

Saakashvili warned of a "counter-revolution and even of interference by external forces".

"There are one or two officials in the army who are now saying...that a military junta should be established in Georgia and are planning something similar to a coup," he told the private Rustavi-2 television channel.

He did not elaborate but warned those involved to end such talk. "They are wrong if they think that we will be weak and tolerant of such things."

US President George W. Bush told Interim President Nino Burdzhanadze that Washington supported Georgia's "sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity".

Separatist tensions have long lurked near the surface in Georgia. Three regions unhappy with central authority in Tbilisi say they will boycott the January poll.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who helped negotiate Shevardnadze's departure, met the leader of South Ossetia, a region in Georgia's mountainous north outside the central government's control since the late 1980s. He planned separate talks with officials from all three areas today.

Russia retains two military bases in Georgia from Soviet times that are viewed with suspicion by some Georgians.

Georgia's new leaders must revive a country crippled by endemic corruption, low tax receipts, and grinding poverty.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development says Georgia's economy is just 38 per cent of the size it was in 1989, with 23 per cent of the 4.5 million population living in absolute poverty on less than $US2.15 ($NZ3.39) a day, according to the World Bank. Twice as many as that live on less than $US4.15 a day.

- REUTERS