Georgia's militant nationalist president has taken personal control of the republic's national guard and ordered the creation of a Georgian Defense Ministry, the Soviet news agency Tass reported.
The agency said President Zviad Gamsakhurdia issued a decree Monday creating the Defense Ministry and ordering it to form an army under his control by supplying more materials and equipment to the national guard. The guard had been controlled by the republic's Interior Ministry.Gamsakhurdia's decree comes at a time of sweeping changes in the Soviet Union triggered by last month's failed coup by hard-liners. In Georgia, a vocal opposition seeks Gamsakhurdia's resignation, and there has been continuing violence in South Ossetia, where residents want to secede from the republic.
Georgian militants on Monday attacked the city of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia. The Georgians were armed with large-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers and missiles.
Georgia, like all but four other republics, is seeking independence from the Soviet Union. South Ossetia, a mostly Muslim region bordering Russia, has accused Georgia of discriminating against local residents.
Demonstrators took to the streets of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, for five straight days recently to protest what they called Gamsakhurdia's dictatorial policies. Twenty people were injured when police fired on the crowd Sept. 2.
Protesters on Monday again called for Gamsakhurdia's resignation.
Gamsakhurdia, a literary translator and former dissident, was elected president of Georgia May 26 with 86.5 percent of the vote. But since then, doubts in Moscow and the West about early signs of authoritarianism and extreme nationalism have deepened.
He routinely denounces his political opponents, as well as the leaders of the rebellious Abkhazian and Ossetian ethnic minorities, as "criminals," "Kremlin agents" and "enemies of the Georgian people."