MOSCOW — The leader of a rebellious Black Sea region resigned early today in the face of sweeping protests against his rule, giving Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili an important victory in his attempt to consolidate his fractured country.
In a dramatic day that saw citizens of the Adzharia region hoisting the Georgian flag in the streets, members of the regional parliament, Cabinet and police defecting in droves and dark warnings of civil war, strongman Aslan Abashidze abruptly accepted the Georgian leader's offer of safe passage and fled in the early morning hours for Russia.
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said the regional boss boarded a flight to Moscow with former Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, who had flown to Adzharia on Wednesday to help mediate a settlement.
Saakashvili, in an early-morning television address, called the resignation "an important step on the way of Georgia's unification, the restoration of the country's unity."
He said he would travel to the Adzharian capital, Batumi, later today to "personally congratulate" the citizens on "the liberation from Aslan Abashidze ... [and] the first successful halt to separatism" in the republics of the former Soviet Union.
Earlier in the day, the Georgian leader declared direct presidential rule in the autonomous region.
Protesters, who had been massing in the streets for days, heard the news of Abashidze's departure after 2 a.m. today and began noisy celebrations. But Abashidze supporters said the forced exile of a leader reelected by popular vote in 2001 marked the end of a meaningful political opposition in Georgia.
"They forced him out of the country. He was the only opposition to the Saakashvili government, and now it's gone," Tsotne Bakuria, spokesman for the Adzharian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said in a telephone interview. "So I don't know what's going to happen next. We're in shock."
The end of the tense standoff broke the hold on power that Abashidze and his associates had enjoyed in the oil-rich region for the last 13 years and provided an important boost for Saakashvili's attempt to extend central government control over a nation in which two other regions have declared their autonomy.
Saakashvili, a 37-year-old U.S.-educated lawyer elected after leading street protests that toppled President Eduard A. Shevardnadze, has vowed to end corruption and preserve Georgia's existence as a unified state in the post-Soviet era.
