Georgia Country

Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili sent his countrymen to the polls Saturday in a snap presidential election, a risky gamble designed to quiet complaints of creeping authoritarianism and prove the once and would-be future president is still a pro-democracy icon. With his credibility on the line, Saakashvili abruptly stepped down as president a year and a half ahead of schedule and called for this weekend's vote as a referendum on his rule.

Georgia's beleaguered leader appeared to have narrowly won reelection to the presidency in a tightly contested snap vote, elections officials announced late Sunday. If the preliminary results are borne out, Mikheil Saakashvili will clear an important hurdle in his quest to restore his tarnished reputation. The once wildly popular hero of a pro-Western democratic revolution and market-based reforms was fighting this weekend to win 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff.

Initial tests indicate that Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, an opposition leader who had claimed he was the target of an assassination plot, died of natural causes, British police said Thursday. Patarkatsishvili, 52, died Tuesday night in his mansion near London less than two months after he said he feared for his life because of his role in a protest movement against Georgia's government.

NATO is unlikely to immediately put Ukraine and Georgia on a course toward membership, the group's spokesman said Wednesday night, dealing a setback to President Bush, who has pushed hard to expand the 26-nation alliance to include the two countries on Russia's southern flank that had been part of the Soviet Union.

In this half-abandoned place of rusting ports and skeleton homes, there is a land that is recognized by nobody. Fifteen years since its bloody war with Georgia, the breakaway republic of Abkhazia is a surreal spot where Soviet isolation lingers, the Cold War never ended and people cling to facades of statehood.

With little leverage but large stakes, the Bush administration launched a delicate diplomatic effort Friday, using private and public pressure to try to bring a cease-fire to the Georgian republic of South Ossetia, where Russian and Georgian forces battled each other into the night. The sudden military confrontation in the Caucasus left the United States in a particularly difficult position: It has promoted Georgia as a budding democracy in a troubled region.

The United States and its allies scrambled Sunday to respond to Russia's attack on Georgia, including asking Moscow whether it intended to overthrow democratically elected President Mikheil Saakashvili. The activity highlighted international concerns about how far Russia would go and whether its ultimate goal was to seize the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and restore domination over a former part of the Soviet Union. But the answer to those questions remained elusive.

Only the rumble of distant artillery fire punctured the silence Sunday here in the capital of Georgia's rebel South Ossetia region, but residents wondered how long the relative calm would last. The town remained on edge, its shocked residents venturing out from cellars for the first time after three days of ferocious fighting to find bodies uncollected and streets strewn with rubble and broken glass from wrecked buildings.

After several hours of trying to reach relatives in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Tsissana Djandjoulia finally got through on Monday afternoon. "Everyone was crying," said Djandjoulia, 49, who moved from Georgia to the U.S. nine years ago. "They don't know what to do. Everyone is in shock." Djandjoulia and her husband, Nodar Janjuli, who own Karpaty grocery store on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of L.A.'

The Georgian soldier sprawled facedown in the ditch, so still that he looked dead at first glance. Skinny arms folded over his head, mouth in the dirt, combat boots braced against the earth. He was cowering at the side of the road in South Ossetia, frozen in place. Russian jets, wheeling overhead, had just bombed the road, a hot explosion that sent chunks of dirt and broken pavement showering down. The soldier picked up his head.