(Updates after resignation)

TBILISI, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Eduard Shevardnadze, whose wily skills helped him oversee the end of the Cold War and restore post-Soviet order in his homeland, quit as Georgia's president on Sunday in the face of mass protests.

In scenes reminiscent of the fall of Communism over a decade ago, protesters stormed parliament and forced him to flee after a parliamentary election which the opposition said was rigged.

After meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister and Georgian opposition leaders, Shevardnadze appeared on television to announce he had resigned. "I'm going home," he said.

Shevardnadze, who survived two assassination attempts in the 1990s, had responded to his biggest political challenge by declaring a state of emergency and accusing his opponents of mounting a coup. On Sunday, asked who would be the next president, he said: "It is not my business."

As partner to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he strode across continents, playing a key role in the negotiations with the West and with eastern European countries which ushered in the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism.

For the last decade he was in charge of what has become an impoverished, violent and unstable Caucasus mountain state with a population of about five million.

He was born in a village in western Georgia during the rule of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, a fellow Georgian, and was immersed in Communist Party work from his early 20s.

Once a teacher, Shevardnadze worked his way up through the hierarchy, rising to lead the Georgian branch of the party in 1972. He left to work with Gorbachev as Soviet foreign minister and member of the ruling politburo in 1985.

Georgia, then a Soviet republic primed by generous subsidies from Moscow, revelled in its reputation as the palm tree-lined playground of the Soviet elite. But it was convulsed by the breakup of the Communist superpower in the early 1990s.

By the time Shevardnadze returned to take power in newly independent Georgia in 1992, a civil war had reduced the centre of the capital Tbilisi to ruins and ethnic conflict raged in its South Ossetia region.

SEPARATISM, CORRUPTION, POVERTY

Georgia remains dogged by separatism, corruption and poverty. Up to 20 percent of the population has fled abroad seeking work.

"I returned to Georgia at an extraordinarily difficult time, in the heat of civil war, when the country was practically destroyed and on the brink of catastrophe," he once said.

"We were able to do the impossible. We saved Georgia."

He points to a modest economic recovery since the darkest days of the early 1990s, while acknowledging rampant corruption.

Detractors saw him as a Machiavellian schemer and were scornful of his conversion from atheist party boss to a supporter of Orthodox Christianity, democracy and the free market.

Falling popular support exposed a deep rift between the 75-year-old veteran leader and reformers, as political and economic problems multiplied.

Failure to secure a breakthrough on Abkhazia, a Black Sea region which broke away from Georgia in a 1992-93 war, and the presence of Chechen rebels in Georgia's lawless Pankisi Gorge hurt relations with Russia.

Shevardnadze had said Georgia's security and prosperity could only be met by full integration with Europe and NATO.

One success was to persuade Washington to send U.S. military instructors to train and equip Georgia's ill-trained army to fight Islamic guerrillas thought to be based in the gorge.

Faced with the mass protests, Shevardnadze had launched a rapprochement with Moscow in trying to work out a solution to calm his opponents and uphold stability.

Shevardnadze had said repeatedly in the past he would not run in the next presidential poll, required by 2005 under the constitution. But opposition protesters wanted him out sooner.

Shevardnadze and wife Nanuli have two children, Paata, a diplomat with UNESCO, and Manana, a journalist and documentary film director. They have five grandchildren.