The ballot count from Sunday's election is considered a mere formality. With 14 percent of polling stations counted, Saakashvili had received 96 percent of the vote and an exit poll had given him 86 percent.

The 36-year-old US-educated lawyer will become Europe's youngest elected head of state once he assumes power in the former Soviet republic where Russia and the United States are both vying for influence.

The firebrand led the protests that ousted veteran Eduard Shevardnadze -- the 75-year-old former Soviet foreign minister who helped end the Cold War and had dominated political here for decades -- in a peaceful "rose revolution" at the end of November.

Now he faces the task of running one of Europe's most dysfunctional states.

The government is broke, corruption is endemic, Georgia's infrastructure is in tatters and two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are controlled by separatist rebels.

He has laid out a bold programme of reform to lift the country out of the quagmire of chaos and poverty that characterised Shevardnadze's rule.

Saakashvili said his priorities would be waging war on corruption, rescuing the economy, bringing separatist territories back under control, embracing Europe and the United States and mending fractious relations with neighbouring Russia.

Saakashvili's first steps as president will be watched closely by both Russia and the United States, rivals for influence over the small but strategically important country.

Georgia is a crossroads for the export of crude oil from the massive new fields of the Caspian Sea to international markets.

His most pressing task will be to fix the state finances bequeathed to him from Shevardnadze. Georgia owes 1.75 billion dollars (1.38 billion euros) in foreign debt, the government is technically bankrupt and it can barely afford to pay wages and pensions.

The new president has pledged to restore central control over separatist regions, but analysts say that could set him on a collision course with Moscow, which backs the entities and is wary of Saakashvili's pro-Western leanings.

Sunday's election was billed by the international community as a test of Georgia's new rulers' democratic credentials and appeared to have passed muster.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said that "the authorities showed the political will to conduct democratic elections," and both the European Union and the United States hailed the poll as an important step for Georgian democracy.

"We believe that the presidential election of January 4th marks a significant step forward in the development of democracy in Georgia," deputy spokesman for the US State Department Adam Ereli said.

The elections "marked an important step in the democratic progress of Georgia," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, adding that the high voter turnout showed "the wish of the Georgian people for a fresh beginning."

As the praise poured in from the West, Russia remained conspicuously silent on the poll.

Saakashvili, who speaks fluent French and English, as well as Georgian, Russian and Ukrainian, studied at Columbia University law school in the United States and briefly served as a minister in Shevardnadze's government, before quitting to form his own opposition party.

TERRA.WIRE