Georgian leader looks ahead

Yet when his country's leader invited him back to Georgia to help rebuild the shattered former Soviet republic, he packed his bags and his American democratic ideals to head home. He eagerly went to work trying to root out corruption, even showing up at a Cabinet meeting with photos of fancy villas, demanding to know how fellow ministers could afford them on $100-a-month salaries.

Soon, however, Saakashvili said, he discovered that his mentor, President Eduard Shevardnadze, was not willing to back him up. So he quit. On Sunday night, Saakashvili showed up at another fancy villa, this time the presidential residence, this time backed by 50,000 people in the streets. He delivered a nonnegotiable demand and walked out a few minutes later with Shevardnadze's resignation and the undisputed status as the country's new dominant political leader.

The transformation of an American-educated lawyer to presidential protege to revolutionary leader mirrors in some ways the story of this poverty-stricken country over the last years of Shevardnadze's rule. Devotion to an iconic figure gave way to widespread disillusionment.

"We see that Georgia needs a new way," Saakashvili said shortly before Shevardnadze's fall. "His staying in power means losing time."

It could soon fall to the 35-year-old insurgent to find the path to reform that eluded Shevardnadze, four decades his senior. In an interview Tuesday, Saakashvili said he would run for president; a few hours after he spoke, Parliament set elections for Jan. 4. Saakashvili instantly became the overwhelming favorite. And yesterday, he received the backing of the interim leader and the parties that drove Shevardnadze from power.

To keep his coalition together, Saakashvili said, he is organizing a power-sharing arrangement in which Nino Burdzhanadze, the Parliament speaker now serving as interim president, would remain as head of the legislature, and Zurab Zhvania, the third opposition leader, would join the government, possibly as minister of state.

"The key thing for us is reform and crackdown on corruption and keeping stability," Saakashvili said. "That's the most important thing."

Should he win, it would make him the most Americanized national leader ever seen in the former Soviet Union outside the Baltic states. Aside from his studies at George Washington, Saakashvili also earned a degree at Columbia Law School and fondly recalls wandering around Capitol Hill and cheering on the New York Knicks. Hanging on his office wall is his Edmund Muskie fellowship certificate and a picture of him with Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

"I was really raised on American democracy, not only my studies but much more," he said. "JFK is my political idol." In modern terms, he patterns himself after another American politician. "For me, the closest thing in terms of political orientation is John McCain. We're very close."

Tall with a broad frame, boyish smile, and chatty manner, Saakashvili also studied in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, in Florence, and in Strasbourg, France, before going to the United States. He met his Dutch wife, Sandra Roelofs, while in France, and speaks so many languages that during a news conference this week he switched seamlessly from Georgian to Russian to English to French.

Saakashvili returned to Georgia in 1995 when his friend, Zhvania, then a Shevardnadze ally, came to New York and asked him to return. He was elected to Parliament later that year and in 2000 was appointed justice minister before quitting a year later. Last year he founded the National Movement opposition party and was elected head of the city council in Tbilisi, the capital.

He likes to defy convention. He adopted a feudal-era Georgian flag as the symbol of his National Movement, then flew it above Tbilisi city hall. After a court ruled it illegal and had it removed, he recalled, "We put it back."

Saakashvili's flamboyant streak disturbs his critics, who call him a radical, a demagogue, or even mentally unbalanced. "If he becomes president, it will be an economic and political disaster for Georgia. Saakashvili is not very sane," said Irina Sarishvili-Chanturia, a Shevardnadze ally elected to Parliament in the discredited Nov. 2 elections that sparked the street protests. "He's absolutely uncontrolled. . . . He's really dangerous."

His allies scoff at the denigration. "Yes, he is dangerous -- for Shevardnadze and for the people who got used to and were part of the Shevardnadze system," said Alexander Lomaia, executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation, a group promoting democratic institutions.