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- WORLD, Page 43World NotesGEORGIA Comeback Politics
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- In Russia he is known as the incorruptible paladin of
- democracy who resigned because he could not countenance
- dictatorship. To the rest of the world he was the public face of
- perestroika who played a pivotal role in ending the cold war. So
- it is a bit strange to see Eduard Shevardnadze staging a comeback
- in the one place where his reputation has been dogged by obloquy:
- his native Georgia.
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- During the republic's campaign for independence, the
- erstwhile friend of Mikhail Gorbachev was branded a "top Kremlin
- agent." But in the wake of ousting dissident turned despot Zviad
- Gamsakhurdia in January, Tbilisi leaders took a more benign view
- of the onetime Georgian Communist Party boss and last week
- appointed him to chair the new State Council, effectively giving
- Shevardnadze stewardship of his mountainous homeland. The
- veteran diplomat now faces pressing tasks: staving off economic
- collapse, healing the divisions created by months of civil
- strife and ending the isolation into which Georgia was pushed
- during Gamsakhurdia's flirtation with dictatorship.
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