ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993                   TAG: 9310030153
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: KUTAISI, GEORGIA                                LENGTH: Medium

MORE GEORGIAN TERRITORY LOST AS ABKHAZ REBELS SEIZE CITY

Groups of displaced Georgians fled to the east Saturday as their president, Eduard Shevardnadze, lost more territory to the rebel forces that have split this once-rich Caucasus republic apart.

Fighters loyal to ousted Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia seized a key port city in Mingrelia, a rebel region adjacent to the rich Black Sea republic of Abkhazia. The Abkhaz rebels drove out the last government troops last week.

After confiscating weapons, troop carriers and tanks from pro-Shevardnadze troops fleeing Abkhazia, ethnic Mingrelians launched a dawn attack that captured the port of Poti. At least six people were killed.

In an interview before the attack, Gamsakhurdia said Poti was a vital supply route needed to feed 1.7 million Mingrelian Georgians as well as 100,000 new Mingrelian refugees from the Abkhaz fighting, thousands of whom were crowding the main square of the main Mingrelian town of Zugdidi.

Apart from the loss of Abkhazia and Mingrelia, Shevardnadze's government also has little say in the affairs of two pro-Russian areas of his country, the Adzhar republic on the Black Sea and South Ossetia, north of the capital, Tbilisi.

Gamsakhurdia said he did not know whether Georgia could ever be stitched together again, but indicated he would join in a political process only if Shevardnadze resigns immediately and calls new elections.

Shevardnadze Saturday held little hope that elections could solve Georgia's troubles. "There's the threat of the disintegration of Georgia. . . . You see how Gamsakhurdia has appeared and is forming his own regional government. Such regional presidents could appear in other places too," he said.

Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, said 200,000 Georgians have been made homeless in his failed, yearlong battle to keep control of Abkhazia. He accused hard-line forces in Russia of seeking to destroy Georgia's independence by backing the ethnic rebels in a complex matrix of civil wars plaguing his 5 million people.

"It is a fact that the (Moscow military) headquarters took part," Shevardnadze said. 


 by CNB