Georgia claimed yesterday to have put down an army mutiny and foiled a plot to disrupt month-long Nato military exercises due to begin in the country today.

A tank battalion surrendered at an army base outside Tbilisi, the capital, after a stand-off with forces loyal to President Saakashvili.

The Interior Ministry said that the rebellion was part of a wider conspiracy to cause a “full-scale military riot” linked to the Nato exercises. However, it dropped earlier claims that Russia was funding a coup aimed at assassinating Mr Saakashvili.

Officials close to the President told The Times that there was no firm evidence of Russian involvement in yesterday’s events or of any organised attempt at a coup.

Georgia is hosting three weeks of military exercises under the Nato Partnership for Peace programme. Russia has condemned them as provocative so soon after last August’s war over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Yesterday tanks and armoured personnel carriers were sent to the Mukhrovani base, about 20 miles east of Tbilisi, after David Sikharulidze, the Defence Minister, accused the tank battalion of starting a mutiny aimed at “overthrowing the authorities”.

Shota Utiashvili, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said that the Georgian security service had uncovered a coup plot organised by Gia Ghvaladze, a former special forces commander. He showed an undercover video apparently showing Mr Ghvaladze boasting that 5,000 Russian troops would arrive to aid their coup.

The Interior Ministry said that Mr Ghvaladze had been arrested hours before the rebellion at the base and charged with organising the mutiny. Police were hunting for two other conspirators.

About 500 soldiers surrendered and handed over their weapons when Mr Saakashvili went to the base and warned that he would authorise force if they refused to submit. They were taken to another base for questioning.

“The plan was to have military riots at different places all over Georgia,” Mr Utiashvili said, “to make sure that at the minimum the Nato training will not happen and at the maximum there is a full-scale military riot in the country.” Mr Saakashvili called the mutiny a “serious threat” in a televised address, saying that the “organisers of disorders” were former Georgian military officers with past links to the Russian secret services.

But the Georgian Opposition accused the President of staging a “theatrical show” to rally public support a month after it began a campaign of street protests to demand his resignation. Davit Gamkrelidze, the leader of the opposition New Rights Party, said: “We suspect that conditions are being prepared by the authorities to announe a state of emergency.”

The Russian Interfax news agency had earlier quoted the base commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Mamuka Gorgiashvili, as criticising the authorities for the political crisis in Georgia, saying: “One cannot look calmly at the process of the country falling apart, at the ongoing confrontation.” Georgian television broadcast film last night of Mr Gorgiashvili admitting that he had been asked by organisers of the conspiracy to lead an armoured column into Tbilisi “where people and the Opposition would be waiting for me”.

The Kremlin denied any involvement. Grigori Karasin, the Deputy Foreign Minister, said: “Instead of dialogue inside the country, the Georgian leadership is trying to accuse Russia of totally insane things.” Nato expressed its unease, warning Russia and Georgia not to make political capital out of war games that involve 1,000 troops from member and partner countries.

Carmen Romero, a spokeswoman, said that Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, was annoyed by Mr Saakashvili’s description of them. “It is not a Nato exercise, but an exercise of Nato with its partners which Georgia is hosting,” she said.

Amid signs that relations between the alliance and Moscow are slipping back into crisis, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, pulled out of a meeting with Nato counterparts later this month. Moscow said that it was in protest at Nato’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats in a spying scandal last week.

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