Abkhazian separatists and their allies have secured the whole of northwestern Abkhazia in a bloody setback for the Georgian leader, Eduard Shevardnadze, just five days before general elections.


Reports from both sides Tuesday said that Georgian troops were swept from their last two villages near the Russian border on Monday night, suffering hundreds of casualties.


Some were evacuated by the Black Sea, others fled inland into the mountains, and at least 200 crossed into Russia and were interned, Itar-Tass said.


Following the capture of Gagra on Friday, the rebels now control the entire stretch from the Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi, to the Russian border, some 100 kilometers away.


The Georgian authorities blamed


the latest defeat on a joint force of Abkhazians, Cossacks and mountain tribesman from southern Russia.


"This treacherous act could have been perpetrated only with assistance from outside forces interested in fanning conflict in Abkhazia", Shevardnadze's ruling State Council said. Abkhazians make up only a fifth of the region's population.


The Georgian Defense Ministry was more direct, placing the blame for the Georgian defeat on the Russian Defense Ministry and the commanders of Russian troops still stationed in Abkhazia despite the breakup of the Soviet Union.


"The Abkhazian extremists and their Russian mentors have put into practice their long-term plot of detaching from Georgia its native territory and the Georgia-Russian frontier land", it said in a statement reported by Itar-Tass.


President Boris Yeltsin, the main guarantor of an abortive cease-fire agreed last month, told the parliament in Moscow that Russian troops were taking over the Abkhazia section of the Moscow-Tbilisi railway.


"There is shooting going on there and we have to protect our weaponry and our servicemen", he said. "But we are not taking a direct role in military actions".


Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister who is the only candidate for head of parliament in Sunday's elections, has expressed despair over the situation and threatened to resign.


He sees the elections as vital to the survival of Georgia as a democratic state. It won independence only last year with the breakup of the Soviet Union.


Abkhazian leaders have called for a boycott.


"There is a war in Abkhazia in the real sense of the word", the chairman of the Abkhazian parliament, Vladislav Ardzinba, told the daily Rossiiskiye Vesti.


"To hold elections in these circumstances is simply unrealistic. Many voters have fled their homes and the remainder will vote under machine-gun barrels. What kind of election is that, and what kind of parliament? "


Yeltsin said that he, Shevardnadze, Ardzinba and representatives of north Caucasus tribes involved in the fighting would meet in Abkhazia next Tuesday.


The conflict has poisoned relations between Georgia and Russia, its former colonial master.


The Georgian government has protested bitterly over the role of the volunteer tribesmen - from autonomous regions of the Russian Federation such as the Adygei and Chechen republics.


Senior commander Jaba Ioseliani said Monday that Georgia would demand the withdrawal of all Russian regular forces stationed there unless the volunteers were withdrawn.


The State Council has also threatened to seize all Russian military hardware on its territory, prompting a tough warning from the Russian Defense Minister, Pavel Grachov.


Shevardnadze has said he would mobilize 40, 000 men to crush the Abkhazian rebellion if necessary.


The Abkhazian parliament's press center, quoted by Interfax, said that Georgian troops had suffered hundreds of casualties in Monday's fighting and fled by sea or over the Russian border, abandoning their weapons.


The State Council spokesman, quoting reports from Sukhumi, said that late Monday a combined Abkhazian-Cossack force captured the villages of Gantiadi and Leselidze, between Gagra and Russia's border.


Georgy Karkarashvili, the Georgian commander in Abkhazia, was forced to flee to the mountains, he said.