Enlarge imageBy Jon Boyle
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia’s new interim president has met security officials and told a key minister to quit after a "velvet revolution" toppled Eduard Shevardnadze.
A source close to the family of Shevardnadze, and opposition officials, were quick to quash a report from Germany that the veteran leader had fled into exile there and said he was still in Georgia.
Interim President Nino Burdzhanadze, former speaker of parliament, blamed Minister Avtandil Dzhorbenadze for Georgia’s dire economic plight and for an election discredited by irregularities which triggered the anti-Shevardnadze protests.
"The State Minister is responsible for this economic crisis into which the country has been led and also for holding the November 2 parliamentary elections," the steely-eyed 39-year-old lawyer told state television.
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A senior economic advisor close to Burdzhanadze said Georgia would ask Washington, which has backed the new leadership, for $5 million to stage new elections.
Developments are being watched closely by Georgia’s big neighbour Russia, and by Western powers who want political stability to avoid problems with a pipeline being built through the territory to take Caspian oil to the Mediterranean Sea.
Oil majors BP and Statoil said the power change would not threaten their plans to build the pipeline.
Russian President Vladimir Putin -- who sent in his foreign minister to mediate the crisis -- said he was concerned that Shevardnadze, 75, had been ousted under the threat of force.
But he added that the overthrow followed "systemic errors in foreign, domestic and economic policy" under Shevardnadze, who had ruled for 11 years in the volatile mountainous state.
"Relations between Russia and Georgia in recent years had been quite difficult," Putin said. "We assume the future legally elected leadership of the country will do everything possible to restore the tradition of friendship between our countries."
Russia has two military bases in Georgia, which has a border with Russia’s conflict-racked region Chechnya. U.S. security advisers have also been working in Georgia under Washington’s "war on terror".
Burdzhanadze went straight into a meeting with military, state security and police chiefs to be briefed on security in a country that has two secessionist provinces and was racked by civil war a decade ago.
"The situation in the country is stable," Security Council member Jemal Gakhokidze told reporters ahead of the meeting.
Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Burdzhanadze to offer support, the State Department said.
Powell also spoke to Shevardnadze, and Boucher praised the former Soviet foreign minister -- a hero in the West for his role in overseeing the end of the Cold War -- for standing down "in the best interests of (Georgia’s) people".
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had sent an envoy to Tbilisi to meet Burdzhanadze, a spokeswoman said.
NEW ELECTION PLANNED
Under the constitution, presidential elections must be held within 45 days in the Caucasus state of five million, but the status of the contested new parliament is ambiguous.
A strong candidate to replace the snowy-haired Shevardnadze is Mikhail Saakashvili, a 35-year-old U.S.-trained lawyer who, with Burdzhanadze, led the protests that toppled him.
Early on Monday, only small knots of protesters huddled around the dying embers of fires outside parliament. Tens of thousands of Georgians delirious with joy had danced late into the night, honking car horns, waving flags and embracing.
Georgia’s new leaders were keen to project a business-like approach to the affairs of a nation plagued by unemployment, poverty and graft. The average salary is just $20 a month.
Zurab Zhvania, a top protest leader, said on Sunday night that the interim leadership would start consultations with foreign governments for special financial and other assistance.
Roman Gotsiridze, head of parliament’s budgetary office and a prominent economist, said the new leadership wanted to start talks on reopening IMF, World Bank and EU financial programmes.
The International Monetary Fund broke off negotiations with the state, citing pervasive corruption and tax dodging, leaving it struggling to repay a $1.75 billion foreign debt.
A German border guards spokesman said earlier that a plane Shevardnadze had landed in Germany, where he has a home. Other German officials and sources in Georgia denied the report.
