Word: tbilisi
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...scenes of young people blowing whistles, banging drums and handing out cough drops amid the throng of protesters in Kiev last week looked familiar, they should: student-led mass protests also followed disputed elections in Tbilisi last year and in Belgrade in 2000, and each time the opposition prevailed. At least one group has played a role in all three movements. Serbia's Otpor, or Resistance, the student organization that spearheaded the revolution that ousted Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, sent "trainers" to aid activists who helped unseat Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. And earlier this year, the group provided...
...lost control of Georgia, and the former Soviet Foreign Minister stepped down to allow Saakashvili to take over without violence. Saakashvili, 36, a U.S.-trained lawyer, vowed to reclaim all of the fractured country's provinces and spread democracy over a unified Georgia. Since then, relations between Tbilisi and Batumi have been tense. Ajaria has been running its own affairs since the Soviet era, but Abashidze refused to recognize Saakashvili's authority or relinquish his control of the region's oil or his private army...
...move to prop him up because Saakashvili had won the respect of Russian President Vladimir Putin by successfully balancing Russian and U.S. interests in the region. Arriving in Batumi to a hero's welcome early Thursday morning, Saakashvili thanked the Ajarians for their "unprecedented heroism and dignity." In Tbilisi, Nino Burjanadze, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, told Time that Georgia had "shown the whole world how important democratic principles are to us." Abashidze was "a classic Soviet-era apparatchik," says Robert Parsons, head of the Georgian service at Radio Liberty in Prague. He effectively stripped opposition parties and media...
...vote - as Shevardnadze did in November - Saakashvili's supporters in Ajaria will launch their own revolution of the roses. But even if the best-case scenario pans out in Ajaria, Saakashvili has two much more difficult nuts to crack - South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have been resisting Tbilisi by force of arms for more than a decade...
...Tbilisi, supporters of opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili, a U.S.educated lawyer, stormed the Georgian Parliament after weeks of demonstrations against blatantly rigged parliamentary elections. The next day President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned, and this month Saakashvili was elected President with over 90% of the vote. TIME's Paul Quinn-Judge caught up with him last week. the events of Nov. 22 seemed very organized. How long had you been planning your strategy? We'd been prepared for the past two years. It was obvious that Shevardnadze would go the oligarchic route of succession - the group around him would transfer power to someone...