Georgia defies critics, backs state of emergency

By James Kilner and Margarita Antidze

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia's parliament on Friday endorsed President Mikhail Saakashvili's state of emergency decree in defiance of local opponents and Western allies, and accused an opposition tycoon of plotting a coup.

Soldiers kept a lower profile in central Tbilisi after cordoning off the main avenue 24 hours earlier, raising expectations that the emergency laws -- which ban independent media and big meetings -- would be ditched.

But parliament voted 149-0 to back the 15-day emergency decree Saakashvili had imposed on Wednesday, after police fired plastic bullets, water cannon and tear gas at peaceful anti-government protesters to drive them off the streets.

Despite harsh criticism from Western allies, Saakashvili and his supporters justified the decree by accusing Russian agents of destabilizing the country.

"The threat that existed until now is still present despite the calm that has been restored," Nino Burjanadze, parliament's speaker said at the start of the vote.

Saakashvili's chief of staff, Eka Sharashidze, later told a news briefing the emergency laws could be abolished soon. "We expect the state of emergency will be lifted in the next few days," he said.

Saakashvili has adopted a staunchly pro-Western stance since surging to power in a peaceful 2003 revolution and hopes to join NATO and the European Union, irking Russia which resents Western intrusion into its former Soviet empire.

The U.S. State Department said a U.S. envoy would go to Georgia at the weekend to emphasize Washington's opposition to the declaration of a state of emergency.

Matt Bryza, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs, will meet Saakashvili and other officials. The state of emergency "is not in Georgia's interests, not in the Georgian people's interests," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov scorned Saakashvili's accusations that Russia had stirred trouble in the country. "We do not interfere in Georgia's domestic problems, do not tell politicians what to do," he told a news conference.

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Georgian opposition leaders and some Western politicians have also rejected the theory of Russian sponsorship, saying the mass protests are more likely a reflection of popular discontent at economic hardship and at Saakashvili's forceful style.

The prosecutor-general earlier accused billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, the opposition's chief financier, of being part of a coup plot and said Georgia would seek to bring the tycoon in for investigation "to question him as a suspect".

On Thursday Patarkatsishvili issued a strongly worded statement from London criticizing Saakashvili for the state of emergency and saying it aimed to gag the opposition ahead of an early presidential election in January.

Patarkatsishvili owns a majority stake in Georgia's main opposition broadcaster Imedi, which was pulled off the air in an armed police raid on Wednesday. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. owns the rest of the shares and has management control.