US, Russia move to up their stake in Georgia

A Georgian opposition supporter holding his infant daughter attends a rally of thousands in front of parliament on Saturday night. Georgia's opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili warned his supporters that it was "too early" to celebrate victory after they stormed parliament, forcing the former Soviet republic's embattled president to flee. PHOTO: AFP

Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had arrived and US Secretary of State Colin Powell was reportedly considering a trip to Tbilisi, capital of this former Soviet republic of fewer than five million people, to press their countries' interests.

Since the fall of communism, Moscow and Washington have tried to keep on friendly terms, but in Georgia, their competing interests have left them in a Cold War style head-to-head confrontation.

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Both sides have a major stake in the outcome of the drama being played out in Tbilisi, where President Eduard Shevardnadze is hanging onto power by his fingertips after the opposition stormed parliament and declared one of its leaders acting head of state.

The reason little Georgia is getting such high-level attention is its location, wedged between Russia and Turkey.

"Georgia is strategically important because that is where NATO, in the shape of Turkey, meets Russia," said Zeyno Baran, Director for International Security and Energy at the Nixon Centre in Washington and a specialist on Georgian affairs.

Another factor is oil. Georgia has none itself but it is on a transit route for the export of crude from the nearby Caspian Sea, where Western oil companies are hungrily developing new fields.

Control the export route for the oil, say analysts, and you control the oil itself. Some observers compare it to the so-called "Great Game" of the 19th century, when Britain, then the world's superpower, was jostling with Russia for control of routes to India.

Moscow has powerful levers of influence in Georgia. It has two army bases in the south and west of the country, a hangover from the Soviet era that the Kremlin is in no hurry to give up.

Russia provides most of Georgia's energy needs through a gas pipeline, and it is in de facto control of two chunks of the country, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Moscow-backed separatists have seceded from Tbilisi.

Washington, too, has its influence. It is Georgia's biggest bilateral aid donor, propping up a government that is nearly bankrupt. It provides military aid. US Marine Corps instructors are working with the Georgian army, and Washington has given Tbilisi six Huey helicopters. Turkey contributed another two.