Güncelleme Tarihi:
President Mikheil Saakashvili called the rebellion a "serious threat" but said the mutineers were isolated.Â
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About 45 minutes later, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told Reuters by telephone from the Mukhrovani tank base that the rebellion was over and the base commander had been arrested.
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Saakashvili accused the plotters of links to
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Police kept reporters at a distance from the mutinous base. It was not clear how many of the several hundred troops stationed there supported the uprising.
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Earlier,
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"One cannot look calmly at the process of the country falling apart, at the ongoing confrontation. But our tank unit will not resort to any aggressive actions," the agency quoted Gorgishvili as saying.
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A Reuters reporter saw around 30 tanks and armored personnel carriers moving along the main road from
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Saakashvili has been under pressure domestically since the war with
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Military experts in
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"This chimes with what we are hearing from military sources," a senior Western diplomat said when asked about these suggestions.
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'REFLECTION OF PROBLEMS'
Rogozin told Reuters from
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"Saakashvili and his entourage are trying to explain the consequences of their foolishness by (alleging)
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Defense Minister David Sikharulidze said the plotters wanted to undermine NATO exercises beginning this week in
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Rogozin said NATO would be better off holding its exercises in a madhouse since "
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Sikharulidze said the commanders of the military base 19 km (12 miles) from the capital had been dismissed and the soldiers ordered to stay in barracks. He told
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The news from
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The war slammed the brakes on
RUSSIAN ANGER AT NATO GAMES
Protesters taking part in demonstrations over the past month are demanding he resign over his record on democracy and the lost war.
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The opposition announced on Monday it would broaden street blockades beyond central
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NATO declined to comment. The month-long military exercises from May 6 to June 3 are a gesture of solidarity for
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Around 1,000 soldiers from more than a dozen NATO member states and partners will practice "crisis response" at a Georgian army base east of
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The month-long exercises at a former Russian air force base in Vaziani are seen as a signal from the 28-member alliance that, despite doubts over the promise of eventual membership,
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had said the decision to go ahead with the exercises was mistaken.
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"I want to specifically stress that responsibility for possible negative consequences of these decisions will fully rest on the shoulders of those who made them and carry them out," he said on Friday.