TBILISI, November 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze declared a state of emergency Saturday, November 22, after opposition supporters overran parliament.

"I am declaring a state of emergency," Shevardnadze said in live televised comments. "We have to bring order to the country."

“We will punish all the criminals and arrest those who have broken the law," said the 75-year-old leader.

"This was an attempt at a coup d'etat and an attempt to topple the President."

"Thugs burst into parliament. I cannot call them by any other name," he was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying.

Shevardnadze's comments came an hour after opposition protesters overran the Georgian parliament while he was addressing the assembly, forcing bodyguards to hurry him out of the chamber.

The move also coincided with Georgia's opposition declaring one of its leaders as interim President.

Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili said Nino Burjanadze, speaker of parliament before the disputed November 2 general election, would replace Shevardnadze as President.

The moves came as the political crisis in Georgia went out of control Saturday.

Shevardnadze has refused to resign after bodyguards dragged him from the parliament building as protesters seized control of the chamber.

"I will not leave, we are all together," Shevardnadze told supporters outside the parliament building, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I will only resign by constitutional means," the embattled 75-year-old leader of the former Soviet republic who has faced nearly daily opposition protests since a disputed November 2 parliamentary election, was quoted as saying.

"All questions can be solved legally," he said.

Shevardnadze was then whisked away by a black limousine that drove away, police running alongside it.

Earlier, protesters demanding the resignation of Shevardnadze stormed the parliament during an address by the Georgian leader as weeks of tension over a contested election boiled over.

Shevarnadze, surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards, was led out of the building by a back door after demonstrators forced the door of the chamber and marched in, waving the red and white flags of their party.

Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili ran toward Shevardnadze as he spoke, screaming, "Resign!"

It was the first session of the parliament elected during a vote earlier this month that foreign governments and Georgian officials have said was rigged in favor of a party supporting Shevardnadze, according to AFP.

Tens of thousands of protestors chanting "resign, resign!" broke through a police cordon in central Tbilisi earlier and marched on Shevardnadze's office in the boldest display yet by the opposition seeking to end the Georgian leader's rule.

Police fired smoke canisters at the protestors at the outset but quickly stood aside on the sidewalks of Tbilisi's main boulevard, many smiling and waving at the demonstrators as they marched through.

Protestors hugged and kissed the officers in full riot gear as they made their way toward the Presidential compound. They massed in front of the building, but made no move to scale the gate surrounding it.

"Shevardnadze, get your plane ready to leave," shouted Saakashvili as he arrived at the gate.

"This is our victory. This is your victory," he told protestors surrounding him.

The march followed a mass protest on Tbilisi's main Freedom square during which Saakashvili told the 30,000 demonstrators that Shevardnadze should go now.

"We are giving him 45 minutes to do that. After that we will go and get him," Saakashvili said.

But Shevardnadze remained defiant.

"I am ready for dialogue with the opposition but without any ultimatums," the embattled leader said in televised comments inside the parliament building.

"Civil disobedience in Georgia is not acceptable," Shevardnadze said.

Saturday's protests were the climax of three weeks of nearly daily rallies sparked by the election that has been slammed as rigged.

Amid warnings that the standoff could erupt into bloodshed, Saakashvili has vowed that the protests would remain peaceful.

"This is a velvet revolution," Saakashvili told his supporters late Friday referring to the 1989 peaceful overthrow of Czechoslovakian communism.

"The Georgian people are here. We will trample this regime. They had better flee right now. Shevardnadze is finished," he said.

The former Soviet republic, which is of vital strategic interest for the West as a transit route for oil from the new fields of the Caspian Sea, is the grips of its worst political crisis since a civil war was fought out on the cobbled streets of Tbilisi more than a decade ago.