Free Republic

Authorities seized a small amount of radioactive material and nerve gas from a taxi in the Georgian capital and detained the driver, officials said Monday. Tedo Mokeliya was detained May 31 after police in this former Soviet republic discovered two containers with 3 curies of cesium-137 and 12 microcuries of strontium in his taxi, said Givi Mgebrishvili, chief of the Interior Ministry's main criminal investigation department. Cesium and strontium, which have medical and industrial applications, are considered likely ingredients for a so-called "dirty bomb," in which conventional explosives are combined with radioactive material. Mgebrishvili said at a news conference that...

MOSCOW - Ratcheting up pressure against the rebellious leader of an autonomous area on the Black Sea, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili leveled treason charges yesterday against a general who had declared loyalty to the regional strongman. Saakashvili said the general had "betrayed his country" by throwing his support to Aslan Abashidze, the defiant head of the Adzharia region in this former Soviet republic. Wanted posters with the mutinous general's photo "will be put up on trees all over Georgia," he said. "We have not given Adzharia to anyone, and no criminal will be able to break the strong will of...

<p>The good news for the people of former Soviet Georgia is that their little Caucasus republic has advanced 160 years in political development in only a decade. The bad news is they still live in a violent, complex neighborhood, cursed with national borders that were expressly designed not to work.</p>