Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in the Georgian capital today in the latest of a string of protests against initial results of a parliamentary election and demanded the president quit.
Around 15,000 people, many waving national flags, demonstrated peacefully in Freedom Square in the centre of the capital, while riot police blocked off roads to the headquarters of veteran President Eduard Shevardnadze.
Police officials said they would use firearms to disperse the crowd if the situation got out of control. Unidentified masked men fired guns to disperse an opposition rally in a town in western Georgia yesterday.
The former Soviet state has been plagued by violence since independence in 1992 and Western governments and investors are keen to maintain stability in a country which will soon be home to a pipeline to take Caspian oil to the Mediterranean Sea.
The election results may also provide the first clues as to who might take over from Mr Shevardnadze after a presidential poll in 2005 in which he is not allowed to run for another term.
The election commission was supposed to publish the final results of the parliamentary vote on Thursday but announced instead that it had another two weeks to do so.
Preliminary results show the pro-Shevardnadze For a New Georgia! bloc is in second place, just behind the opposition Revival Union party. In third place is an opposition bloc led by former Justice Minister Mikhail Saakashvili.