
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 30, 1995                   TAG: 9508300060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

TERRORISTS HIT IN GEORGIA

Regional leaders got sharp notice of the depth of political volatility in the Caucasus when a car bomb exploded Tuesday outside the Georgian Parliament and injured Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze.

Shevardnadze, who helped turn the Soviet Union away from communism as Soviet foreign minister in the late 1980s, was shown sitting dazed in his undershirt after the explosion, his face bloodied by lacerations.

Shevardnadze, 67, reportedly was leaving the Parliament building and was hurt by glass shards from the explosion near a waiting motorcade.

The explosion injured at least six other people, according to the independent Russian news service Interfax, but no deaths were reported. Russian television showed oily black smoke billowing in the center of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and several other vehicles in flames after the blast.

In a hospital interview with Georgian state television, the soft-spoken Shevardnadze declared ``war without mercy'' against terrorists.

``By today's terrorist act, the terrorists bring closer their own demise,'' he said.

No one claimed responsibility for the bomb, believed to have been contained in a jeep-like Russian Niva, but Shevardnadze has confronted instability and violence since he quit as Soviet foreign minister in 1990 to help his native Georgia make the transition to independence.

Shevardnadze was en route to a ceremony to sign a new national constitution recently adopted by Parliament. It would give the Georgian president broad new powers, and Shevardnadze is expected to be a leading presidential candidate in November elections.

``It's clear Shevardnadze's enemies tried to assassinate the head of our state to stop the signing ceremony,'' Ramaz Sakvarelidze, Shevardnadze's press secretary, told The Associated Press.

Not only has he tangled with brazen criminal gangs and a strident political opposition in Georgia, but Shevardnadze also has tried to put down an ethnic breakaway movement in Abkhazia that is similar to the effort by Chechen rebels to gain independence from Russia.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who has mercilessly battled the Chechen rebellion, quickly sent Shevardnadze wishes for a speedy recovery.

by CNB