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LISA MULLINS: Next door to Turkey and Armenia is Georgia. Today, there was a mass demonstration in Georgia. The protesters are calling for the resignation of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashivili. They accuse him of bungling the war with Russia last year and of becoming increasingly undemocratic. Earlier, we spoke with reporter Jacob Resneck, who was at the main protest in the capital, Tblisi.

JACOB RESNECK: Well, we've got numbers I would say considerably in the thousands. They're listening to speeches from the opposition parties. They're waving flags and banners. There's somewhat of a celebratory atmosphere in as much as there are – ice cream vendors and people selling pastries and that sort of thing, sunflower seeds. But people are walking around and greeting each other, listening to the speeches -- some are clapping. People are dressed warmly, so that suggests to me that some people are prepared to stay the night. The police are almost out of sight except for some patrols. The demonstrators and organizers have said that they're prepared to stay as long as it takes, and they are getting ready for several days, even more than a week of demonstrations.

MULLINS: Jacob, you're saying that it's a pretty civil gathering that's going on there. But many of these people were people who were on the same side of this president, Mikhail Saakashivli just a couple of years ago. He's a product in fact of the so-called Rose Revolution of 2003. What went wrong, and why are they angry right now?

RESNECK: Well, many of the people in the opposition and many of the people that brought him in power through the Rose Revolution accuse him of moving the country in an autocratic direction. They're saying that they don't have a truly free press, that the opposition claims to have been harassed. Basically, many people of his former allies in the Rose Revolution are questioning his commitment to democratic ideals, and they're saying it's time for him to go before a vote of the people again and not wait until 2013. Now, they're singing.

MULLINS: Jacob, what is that singing going on?

RESNECK: They're singing patriotic songs now.

MULLINS: Let me -- before we let you go there, because it sounds like it's getting pretty voluble. One other question though about the wider interest in what's happening there. What is Washington's stake, America's stake in the outcome of this struggle?

RESNECK: Well, the US I think has a very large stake here. There's been very close economic and military cooperation. A lot of it has to do with Georgia's extremely strategic location to the Caucuses and it's approximate to the Middle East and also of the energy reserves of gas and oil in the region.

MULLINS: All right. Reporter Jacob Resneck in the Georgian capital Tblisi. Jacob, thank you.

RESNECK: You're welcome.

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