BBC: "Power games in the Caucasus"

Roman Gogoladze, a farmer living in the village of Dgvari, high up in the mountains of Georgia in the Caucasus, points at the foot wide cracks in the walls of his house.

The whole structure looks as though it will soon collapse and slide down the valley.

"Big powers - the oil companies and the government - are destroying our homes and our land," he says.

"They are playing their money games and ignore people like us."

The anger of Mr Gogoladze and other villagers in Dgvari is mainly directed at BP, the energy giant leading a consortium which recently completed the world's longest pipeline project, stretching 1,767kms from Baku in Azerbaijan via Tbilisi in Georgia to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and an associated South Caucasus gas supply line are sunk into the mountainside less than one kilometre above Dgvari.

Villagers say pipeline excavations have seriously destabilised surrounding lands and allege that promised amounts of compensation have not been paid.

BP insists work on the BTC is not to blame for Dgvari's landslide problems.

It says it has offered $1m (?550,000) of humanitarian aid to the government to help resettle the villagers elsewhere.

Foreign investment

Georgia, one of the richest republics in the old USSR, went into sharp economic decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the country's independence in the early 1990s.

As Russia's economy went into free-fall, Georgia lost its key export market, particularly for its food produce and wine.

More than a million of the country's 5m people were forced to emigrate in search of jobs.

Though there have been limited signs of economic improvement recently, the country - with much of its infrastructure in a state of near collapse, most of its industry at a standstill and estimates of unemployment varying between 30% and 50% - is in desperate need of investment.

The Georgian government says the BTC project will play a central role in rejuvenating the country's economy.

According to government statistics, more than 60% of total foreign investment over the past two years has been associated with the project.

"I have no illusions that this pipeline will solve all our problems, but this is a start," says Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili.

Seismic zone

However, many farmers along the route of the BTC, plus local environmental groups, have voiced strong opposition.

The oil and gas pipelines go near the source of the country's famed Borjumi spring water, a principal export.

Georgia is in a seismic zone: the BTC's critics say any earthquake activity could cause massive environmental and economic damage.

The $3.6bn BTC project, strongly backed by the US and British governments, plays a key role in an increasingly frenzied battle for control of vital energy sources in the Caspian region and Central Asia, with Washington and London viewing the presence of the pipeline as a vital counterbalance to Russia's growing control over the area's energy supplies.

The Georgian government not only hopes to gain much needed funds from charging for the transit of oil and gas through its territory.

With much of its own energy sources, including a network of hydro stations, in a state of severe disrepair, the country is heavily dependent on imports, particularly of gas, supplied by Russia.

Moscow, which has military bases in Georgia, has watched with concern as its former republic has turned to the West: US military advisors are training the Georgian army - President Bush visited Tbilisi last year, describing the country as "a beacon of freedom."

At the beginning of this year Russia doubled the price of gas it supplies to Georgia.

In late January, in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record, an as yet unexplained explosion severed the pipeline carrying Russian gas to Georgia, leaving a large part of the country without power for a week.

President Saakashvili was quick to point the finger at Moscow, alleging his country was the victim of "outrageous blackmail."

Power and influence

Georgia is seeking to diversify energy supplies, though a gas import agreement with Iran met with Washington's disapproval and was quickly terminated.

The government is now negotiating terms for a gas supply from the BTC associated South Caucasus Pipeline project.

Yet while the government says it's trying to escape from Moscow's shadow, there are indications powerful political factions are pressing for the sell-off of the country's power sector to Russian interests.

"Strange games are going on here," says Mrs Salome Zourabichvili, the country's former foreign minister, sacked by Mr Saakashvili last year.

"There's a lot of infighting in government with a pro-Moscow faction seeming to get the upper hand.

"What is white is black and vice versa. As everywhere else in the territories of the old Soviet Union, Russia is using its power as an energy producer to further its influence."

Empty promises

The complexities of local politics, big power rivalries and the energy business mean little to Roman Gogoladze and his fellow farmers in the village of Dgvari.

The government says there's a growing danger of landslides and has told the village's 500 inhabitants they must leave.

"The Russians, BP, the government - they're all the same," says Mr Gogoladze.

"All sorts of promises are made but nothing ever happens.

"When we protested against the pipelines, the police came and beat people up. Not one person in the village was given work on the project. Indians and Columbians were brought in instead and we were left with nothing - but we are never going to leave our lands."

By Kieran Cooke