950825

Georgia adopts

first post-Soviet

constitution

TBILISI, (Georgia): Georgia's parliament on Thursday adopted the republic's first post-Soviet constitution after more than two months of debate.

"It is a historic day for Georgia," said the country's leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. "The consitution will guarantee the republic's future prosperity.

The lawmakers voted 159-8 with no abstentions to approve a curtailed document that lacks essential chapters on the parliament's upper chamber and on the territorial division.

The reason is that two breakaway province, Abkhazia and south Ossetia, refuse to recognize Georgian jurisdiction. After bloody conflicts with Georgian troops in the aftermath of the 1991 Soviet collapse, Georgia allowed Russian peackeepers to maintain peace in both regions.

The lawmakers postponed a vote on the missing chapters until territorial issues are resolved, a move that raised concern in Moscow.

"This naturally gives rise to some concern on our part and puts us on the alert concerning prospects for progress on that track of settlement," Mikhail Demurin, Deputy press spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said at a briefing.

The new constitution introduces a presidency and institutes a 235-seat parliament. Presidential and parliamentary elections are set for the same date, Nov. 9.

The president is the head of the republic's government, whose members must be approved by parliament. Parliament can impeach the president by a two-thirds vote, but the president has no right to dissolve parliament.

Under the constitution, the republic will have a constitutional court, with authority to rule on the legitimacy of parliamentary and governmental acts, and a Supreme Court.

The Soviet constitution was abandoned in 1990. It was replaced with an old constitution adopted in 1921, during the republic's brief period of independence between the breakup of the Russian empire and Georgia's entry into the Soviet Union.-AP