Communists in protest march

underlined the dangers from the collapse of Soviet authority.

At least 17 people were killed and 50 injured in fighting between

Government forces and opponents of the Transcaucasian republic's

President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, official spokesmen said.

Local journalists said opposition national guardsmen shelled Georgia's

Government House and tried to storm the building.

The whereabouts of Gamsakhurdia, accused of dictatorial rule since his

landslide election win in May, were not known, but there were reports

that he had been granted safe-conduct to leave the country.

Georgia, ruled from Moscow for more than a century, was the only one

of the 12 former Soviet republics not to join a new Commonwealth of

Independent States on Saturday.

Russia's Boris Yeltsin and 10 other republican leaders pronounced the

Soviet Union dissolved in the Kazakh capital Alma-Ata, and told

President Mikhail Gorbachev he had no job.

Several thousand hardliners carrying communist red flags and portraits

of Lenin and Stalin yesterday denounced the move at a rally. Speakers

accused Yeltsin of plunging the people into poverty and destroying the

union.

They marched to the Ostankino television headquarters in an

unsuccessful attempt to win the right to present their views over the

national television network.

The demonstrators, rallying under the slogan ''March of the Hungry

Queues,'' also said they rejected aid from the United States, which has

already started to arrive. An aircraft carrying potatoes, meat, and

canned foods -- surplus stock from the Gulf war -- was flown to Moscow

from Italy.

US embassy volunteers helped distribute it to children's homes,

hospitals, and old people. Another aircraft carried supplies to Russia's

second city, St Petersburg.

Supporters say the new commonwealth is the only way to prevent chaos

and bloodshed as the republics insist on independence.

It will link member-states in a network of political, economic, and

military agreements, with no central authority.

But many questions remain unresolved for the 280 million people living

on one-sixth of the world's land surface. They include the Kremlin's

nuclear arsenal and command of its 3.7 million troops, although Yeltsin

has won ultimate control over the nuclear button.

Ukraine is keen to restrict the commonwealth's military role to the

agreed unified command over nuclear arms, while other republics see a

bigger strategic force.

A question mark also remains over nuclear weapons based in Kazakhstan,

which is unwilling to disarm until Russia does.

The agreement could face an economic challenge at the start of 1992,

when Yeltsin pushes ahead with price liberalisation.

This could put intolerable strain on the budgets of some republics,

notably in Central Asia, as they compete for food and other essential

goods with a higher-priced Russian market.

Gorbachev looks set to bow to the inevitable and step down this week

after struggling in vain to defend his vision of a common political and

economic space. -- Reuter.