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Russia says US fanning instability in Georgia

BAKU/MOSCOW: Russia accused the United States of stirring up instability in Georgia on Wednesday, hours after US Vice President Dick Cheney landed in the region to show support for Washington’s ex-Soviet allies.

The United States has condemned Russia for sending troops and tanks into Georgia last month but Moscow has countered by alleging that Washington helped spark the conflict by failing to rein in its ally Georgia. Cheney flew into Azerbaijan, Georgia’s oil-producing neighbour which has close ties to the United States, on the first leg of a tour that will also include Georgia and Ukraine.

“We need to wait until Mr Cheney is actually in Georgia to see how he assesses the situation,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a news briefing. “But all these calls on Tbilisi (by the United States) about the need to restore all of its destroyed military capability and so on do not in any way promote the stabilization of the situation in the region,” he said.

Underlining Washington’s backing for Georgia, the USS Mount Whitney, the sophisticated command warship of the US Sixth Fleet, was “en route to Georgia” loaded with more than 17 tons of humanitarian aid, a navy spokesman said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the EU’s rotating presidency, is to visit Moscow and Tbilisi next week for talks on the standoff. The Kremlin said Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed Georgia in a telephone call on Wednesday.

Medvedev said the EU had adopted a “generally balanced” approach on Georgia, but he expressed regret that the 27-member bloc did not identify Tbilisi as the aggressor in the conflict, a Kremlin statement said. Russia drew Western condemnation by sending its forces deep into Georgia and later recognising the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Russia said it was morally obliged to attack Georgia to prevent what it called genocide after Tbilisi tried to retake South Ossetia by force. Moscow says it is in full compliance with a French-brokered ceasefire.

Russia and Georgia have shut their embassies in each other’s capitals following Tbilisi’s decision to cut diplomatic ties with Moscow, officials and news agencies said Wednesday. “The Russian embassy in Georgia is no longer functioning. The consular section is closed as well, pending future directives from Moscow,” embassy spokesman Alexander Savonov told AFP in Tbilisi.

In Moscow, Georgia’s charge d’affaires Givi Shugarov told the Interfax news agency that the country’s embassy had also ceased its diplomatic functions. reuters

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