A Channel 4 interview with the director of the Liberty Institute in Georgia confirmed that western oil money provided the finance behind last week's toppling of the Shevardnadze regime.

Despite the poverty caused by the IMF's refusal to lend money for poverty reduction programmes, the New Internationalist index had praised Georgia for its 'well above average indicators for literacy, freedom and life expectancy compared with other states in the Caspian basin'. But that brand of freedom that doesn't include mroe rights for the US oil hegemony appears to be short lived.

Shevardnadze had upset those interests by arguing that the $2.9bn Baku-Ceyhan oil/gas pipelines could damage the country's ecology and had been warned by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) consortium that the whole project was at risk if it did not sign the environmental assessment by the end of November 2002. In contrast, new president Mikhail Saakashvili had been courting Washington for some time, according to Business Week, with promises to block Shevardnadze's plan to give Russian oil interests a foothold in the country. In addition, the installation of a pro-western president strengthens support for the US military, now fighting a 'Cold War II' with the Russian army for control of the region, according to Channel 4.

Read another excellent report on UK indymedia here:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/11/282127.html