Opposition Leaders Move to Solidify Their Hold on Georgia : Power struggle: Pair claim to have ended the rule of President Gamsakhurdia, still holed up in Government House.

TBILISI, Georgia —  This country’s military strongmen showed themselves to the world together on Saturday for the first time since claiming power, even as it became clear that their efforts to capture the president had bogged down and were being suspended.

Tengiz Kitovani and Dzhaba Ioseliani, two professionals in the fine arts field--and both of whom have criminal records--moved to impose the authority of their Military Council throughout this land north of Turkey by ordering regional prefects appointed by President Zviad Gamsakhurdia replaced with their own people.

“School is over,” joked the squat and balding Kitovani, commander of the opposition-allied National Guard. He claimed that he and the aquiline-nosed, elegant-mannered Ioseliani, leader of a private paramilitary force known as Sakartvelos Mkhedrioni, or the Knights of Georgia, had “put an end” to Gamsakhurdia’s rule.

The president, elected by a landslide eight months ago but accused by many here of rapidly turning into a dictator, remained holed up in his fortified lair beneath Government House. Fierce fighting raged uphill from Parliament, and it was evident that, at least on that flank, anti-Gamsakhurdia forces were nowhere near the building, as they had claimed to be Friday.

Ioseliani said that opposition fighters had repulsed an attempt by Gamsakhurdia’s troops to seize the Tbilisi television transmission tower. Explosions and the crackle of gunfire resounded into the night.

Sitting side by side at a news conference and looking like a sort of Georgian Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Ioseliani and Kitovani had differed for days on whether to try to capture Gamsakhurdia by invading the well-defended building where the president has taken refuge.

Kitovani, a Gamsakhurdia appointee who turned against the president, said Saturday that he had put his plan for a “storming” on hold.

Gamsakhurdia and his men under arms, now estimated by the opposition to number 300, may very well be allowed to stay in their underground hide-out “as long as the electricity is not cut and the water keeps running,” Kitovani said.

He claimed to possess a “terrible weapon” that he has refrained from using because 12- and 13-year-old children are allegedly being held hostage inside the Government House redoubt.

Opposition leaders including Kitovani have been vague about what will happen to Gamsakhurdia, 52, should he emerge from hiding, but Ioseliani left no doubt: “He can sit tight in the bunker or come out to freedom, and then we will hold a trial for him.”

The commanders spearheaded efforts last Thursday to form the opposition’s own rival government, calling on former Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua to head it. To legitimize the overthrow of Gamsakhurdia, they have assembled at least 12 political parties in a consultative committee to act as another interim political institution.

But by Ioseliani’s own admission, there is already friction. Some of his fighters made no secret Saturday of having been the masked men who fired on pro-Gamsakhurdia demonstrators the day before. Two people were killed instantly and two more died after being hospitalized.

Some opposition politicians came to Ioseliani on Saturday morning to protest the bloodshed, but he said he told them, “Lord, this is a state of siege!” He claimed his men were provoked by elite police officers who mingled with the crowd and fired the first shot.

Eyewitnesses said it was the men in black masks who did the only shooting.

The two military leaders denied at their press conference that they had staged a putsch and said important decisions, such as whether Georgia should join the Commonwealth of Independent States with other former Soviet republics, should be decided later by Parliament. However, from their words, it was clear that the two men expect to wield a good deal of power in the future.

“Sigua is the prime minister, but as long as there is a struggle by so-called supporters of Gamsakhurdia, the military will take decisive action to stop that,” Kitovani said.

The more reflective Ioseliani, who was convicted of banditry 38 years ago but went on to become a professor of philology and a playwright, said the Military Council would not meddle in Sigua’s affairs.

Georgians who know them say Ioseliani, 65, spent 15 years in prison for robbery and homicide, and that Kitovani, a sculptor whose monuments adorn Tbilisi’s wedding palace, was imprisoned for eight years for causing an automobile accident while drunk.

Asked about his prison record, Kitovani, who is known by many in this wine-growing land as a heavy drinker, said he was framed in 1969 by Georgia’s then-Communist authorities.

Ioseliani was also jailed last year by Gamsakhurdia on illegal firearms charges but was sprung from prison along with other political adversaries of the president a little more than a week ago. He had been originally nominated as a candidate in last May’s presidential elections, but Gamsakhurdia got Parliament to disqualify him.

Kitovani said opposition forces now control 90% of Tbilisi, where about a third of the republic’s population lives, and the vast majority of the rest of Georgia. He admitted, however, that there are still signs of support for the beleaguered president.

Both military leaders said they want to abolish the presidency, an institution that Parliament created only last April and that Gamsakhurdia made into a virtually omnipotent office with powers to ban the press, clap critics in prison and dictate to officials at all levels.

Ioseliani said the Knights of Georgia, which appeals both to the Georgian love of chivalrous adventure and to the widespread passion for firearms, was begun in 1988 as a charity and as a paramilitary organization.

Its fighters, said by Ioseliani to have numbered as many as 5,000, were deployed in the Ossetia and Abkhazia minority homelands to try to defend Georgian interests while also keeping the peace, he said.

The Knights acquired a vast arsenal by buying weapons from black market dealers in neighboring Azerbaijan or from Soviet soldiers hungry for cash, Ioseliani said.