EU envoy bids to stop possible Georgia violence

A special European Union envoy was travelling to Tblisi today to encourage all sides in the protests in the Georgian capital to abstain from violence, the Italian foreign ministry said.

Italy, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said it was following “with worried attention the events underway in Georgia, noting with relief the absence of victims,” a ministry statement said.

The Italian ambassador in Tblisi, acting on behalf of the EU, had gathered the other EU ambassadors to evaluate the situation, the statement said.

The EU’s special representative for the southern Caucasus region, Heikki Talvitie, headed to Tblisi to “encourage all sides to abstain from any kind of violence and to find together a solution for the present difficult situation in George that conforms to European principles,” the ministry statement said.

Georgia’s opposition called on its supporters to press forward its “velvet revolution” by seizing more government buildings, while the nation’s defence minister said the military would not use force to solve the crisis and pledged allegiance to President Eduard Shevardnadze.

Russia’s foreign minister shuttled between the beleaguered Shevardnadze and his opponents, seeking a peaceful way out of the impasse for the ex-Soviet republic, which straddles oil routes.