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After a week of confusion that can only have benefited incumbent Gigi Ugulava, arguments in the Georgian opposition took a further twist tonight as one of the leading members of the parties that had earlier announced the were abandoning their plans for a "primary" to pick a candidate for mayor of Tbilisi said the option was still on the table.

Kakha Kukava, secretary general of the Conservative Party said that if other parties did not respond in the next week to their offer to replace the primary with an opinion poll then he and his allies may return to using a primary.

However, Irakli Alasania, leader of the Alliance for Georgia and that three-party grouping's candidate for mayor has ruled out both participation in a primary and the proposed alternative of waiting until mid-April to see what an opinion poll reveals.

Most observers agree that Alasania is the best placed opposition candidate but he seems unable to get the Conservatives and People's party (who have both nominated candidates for the primary) to fall in behind him.

Last week, in an effort to forge unity, he stood on a platform with them - alongside Zurab Noghaideli, formerly Mikheil Saakashvili's prime minister and now leader of the Vladimir Putin-allied Movement for a Fair Georgia - but did not agree to enter a primary and has since distanced himself from any suggestion of reaching an agreement that involves Noghaideli.

Although few think that the Conservatives or People's Party could win an election it is certain that their candidates, if entered, would be given significant coverage by the regime-controlled television stations as a way of damaging Alasania or any other more significant opposition candidate.

Given the rules for the election - a winning candidate simply has to poll more than 30% and top the poll and that Ugulava and the ruling United National Movement can reasonably hope to poll 40% even in the capital - where the opposition have historically been strongest and where other media outlets are available - it would not require many opposition supporters to divert their vote from the anti-government front runner to give victory to the man many think is Saakashvili's hand-picked successor.