Georgia opposition want to scrap presidency

By Margarita Antidze and James Kilner

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia's newly united opposition pledged on Tuesday to scrap the post of president -- a position now held by Mikhail Saakashvili whom they accuse of corruption -- if they win a parliamentary election next year.

Saakashvili holds sweeping executive powers and his party dominates parliament. A two-thirds majority of legislators would be needed to change the Georgian constitution.

"Our slogan is 'Georgia without a president'," senior opposition activist Goga Khaindrava said in a Tbilisi park where the coalition unveiled its aims and plans.

Saakashvili, 39 -- a staunch ally of the United States -- came to power in a peaceful 2003 revolution but rumors of corruption and mysterious deaths have tarnished his government this year.

Saakashvili denies the allegations and no evidence has been presented to back them up.

Now the opposition coalition says it aims to win parliamentary elections next year and then delete the presidential post from the constitution.

The country's splintered opposition united over the weekend to form a loose coalition which analysts say poses the first big threat to Saakashvili's authority.

One of the main challenges the coalition -- which comprises the eight main opposition parties -- faces is to remain united, analysts said, and it is still too early to tell if they will be a force at next year's election.

Former Soviet Georgia hosts part of a pipeline which pumps oil from the Caspian Sea to the Europe and is the centre of a power struggle between the West and Russia.

The arrest on Thursday of Irakly Okruashvili, a former defense minister who two days before had set up an opposition party and accused Saakashvili of corruption and plotting murder, triggered a protest attended by up to 15,000 people -- the biggest since 2003.

Okruashvili's supporters said they would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights about his arrest, which they say was politically motivated.

The opposition coalition plans a series of rallies across the country over culminating in Tbilisi on November 2.

"It's our common resolve to use the street in order to show our force and strength but not to change the government via street action. We have to go to elections," said Salome Zurabishvili, Saakashivili's former foreign minister until 2005 and head of an opposition party.

Revolutions and war scarred Georgia during the first years of independence after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.