La Russie doit construire une base navale en Géorgie[en] 

Russia and Georgia fought a five-day conflict in August 2008, when Russian troops repelled a Georgian assault on the breakaway pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, which broke free from Tbilisi's rule in the early 1990s. 

Russia recognised South Ossetia and Georgia's second breakaway region of Abkhazia as independent states. Russia has thousands of troops stationed in both regions. 

Around 20,000 Georgian villagers remain displaced. Some are afraid to return to South Ossetia, while others have no homes to go to after they were razed by militias. 

Economic growth in Georgia slowed dramatically after the war, just as the global financial crisis was about to take hold. 

The leaders of around a dozen opposition parties, in a rare show of unity, issued a joint declaration on Thursday (29 January), calling on Saakashvili to quit and hold free and fair elections for president and parliament. 

"Mikheil Saakashvili and his team, in their five years in power, have led the country to catastrophe," it read.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in the former Soviet republic are due in 2013. Saakashvili has ruled out early polls, brushing off opposition accusations that he walked into a war Georgia could not possibly win. 

Russian media reported that Moscow is planning to start building a naval base this year in Georgia's Black Sea separatist region of Abkhazia, a step Tbilisi said would violate its sovereignty. 

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed official at Russian naval headquarters as saying commanders planned to station vessels at the Abkhaz port of Ochamchire. 

Russia's navy could not immediately be reached for comment, but an official with Abkhazia's separatist administration confirmed the plan for a Russian navy base at Ochamchire. 

The Russian navy has one operational base abroad, in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Ukraine's government - which like Georgia's leaders is seeking NATO membership - has said it will not renew the lease on the base when it runs out in 2017. 

"There is a plan to make such a base, but not as an alternative to Sevastapol. It is likely to be an infrastructure base for Russian military boats," Maxim Gunjia, the separatists' deputy foreign minister, told Reuters. 

(With Reuters.)