Quoted Text

Russia-Georgia War Intensifies
Civilian Deaths on Increase In Conflict Over S. Ossetia

Bush: U.S. Urges Immediate Standown in Georgia
President Bush took a break from his visit to the Olympics to call for an immediate halt to the violence and a stand down of Russian troops in Georgia.

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 10, 2008;

GORI, Georgia, Aug. 9 -- Russian strategic bombers and jet fighter planes pounded targets in many parts of Georgia on Saturday, hitting apartment buildings and economic installations, as well as military targets in an escalating war that is killing more and more civilians and confounding international efforts to secure a cease-fire.

Russia continued to pour troops and tanks into South Ossetia, the breakaway region of Georgia that triggered the conflict, to confront Georgian forces that are attempting to reclaim the region. Both sides claimed control of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, where sporadic gunfire and shelling continued Saturday.

"Nobody really controls anything," said a senior U.S. official, noting the continuing fighting.

Civilians on both sides of the conflict fled homes, sometimes leaving behind devastation and bodies buried in rubble. Russia said that 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia and that more than 30,000 refugees had crossed into Russia.

Georgian officials said 130 people were killed on its side of the unofficial border with South Ossetia, including at least 30 civilians who died Saturday when bombs from Russian planes struck two apartment buildings in this city.

None of the casualty figures could be independently confirmed.

Rhetoric on both sides escalated Saturday, with each side saying it wants peace and a cease-fire but with neither showing signs of backing down. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Georgia of "genocide." Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, speaking to a small group of foreign reporters, vowed that Georgia will "resist until the end."



The Russians "want to get rid of us," he said. "They want to make regime change. And they want to get rid of any democratic movement in this part of their neighborhood. That's it, period."

President Bush and other Western leaders repeated calls for a cease-fire, their comments increasingly leavened with criticism of Russia's intensifying operation. Georgian hopes of pledges of help were disappointed.

"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia," said Bush, who was in Beijing for the opening of the Olympics but spoke to Saakashvili by phone Saturday afternoon. "They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis."

Alexander Stubb, the Finnish foreign minister and chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, noted that Russia, which has had peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia for years, could no longer be considered a mediator. "Russia is at the moment a party in this conflict," Stubb said. Speaking in Helsinki on Saturday, he expressed little hope for a quick solution. Asked about the chances of a cease-fire and negotiations, he said: "On a scale of 1 to 10, we are at about 2."

The French government, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, urged Russia to accept a Georgian call for a cease-fire. The French presidency "underlines that the pursuit of military action would affect its relationship with Russia," a statement said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is due to visit the region Sunday.

The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, failed for the second day in a row to agree on a common response to the crisis.

Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly I. Churkin, said the fighting would not stop until Georgia withdrew its forces from South Ossetia and signed an agreement pledging not to use force in the province again. The United States countered that Russia's military intervention into Georgian territory was threatening to destabilize the region. The United States urged all parties to agree to a cease-fire. "The first thing that has to happen is that the violence has to stop and Russian forces have to be withdrawn," said Alejandro D. Wolff, the U.S. deputy permanent representative.

Despite those efforts, combat continued for a second day Saturday and appeared to widen to other fronts. Separatists in Abkhazia, another section of Georgia seeking independence or integration into Russia, began shelling Georgian positions in the upper Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia controlled by the government in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

The United Nations announced it will withdraw about 15 military observers from Abkhazia, citing fear that the U.N. blue helmets could get caught in crossfire between Russian-backed Abkhaz forces and Georgian troops.

Saakashvili said in the interview that Russia was staging seaborne forces in the Black Sea near Abkhazia and planned to land troops and launch attacks on Georgian forces in the upper Kodori Gorge.

A senior U.S. official said that the Bush administration had received confirmation that Russia was moving elements of its Black Sea fleet to the area, which he described as another example of a disproportionate response by Russia.



"Why that's a legitimate use of military assets is beyond me," the official said.

Saakashvili said Russian planes struck the Black Sea port of Poti, attempted to hit but missed a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to Turkey, and bombed railway stations, among other nonmilitary targets. Doctors working in Gori said that Russian planes had struck two military field hospitals.

Saakashvili said Georgia had shot down 10 Russian SU-27 fighter jets (Russia has confirmed losing two). He accused Russia of attempting to sow panic among the population by targeting apartment buildings in Gori and homes in nearby villages.

"Russia is behaving like a rogue state," he said.

"This is unprecedented," said Georgian political analyst Giorgi Margvelashvili. "Not since the destruction of the Soviet Union have they done things like that."

Georgia has mobilized its reserves and is calling home 2,000 troops serving in Iraq for the fight against Russia.
"There is panic in Tbilisi," said a senior U.S. official, briefing reporters in Washington. He said Russia is using TU-22 supersonic strategic bombers that can carry as much as 54,000 pounds of bombs and cruise missiles. He also said that Russia has launched ballistic missiles against targets in Georgia.

Russian officials were adamant Saturday that they were striking only targets associated with what they described as Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, an area patrolled since the early 1990s by Russian peacekeepers.

Putin, returning from the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, flew to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia in Russia, where most of the South Ossetian refugees from the fighting have fled.

"Russia's actions in South Ossetia are totally legitimate," Putin said.

"We urge the Georgian authorities to immediately stop their aggression against South Ossetia, to stop all violations of all standing agreements on a cease-fire and to respect the legal rights and interests of other people." The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of encouraging Georgia to carry out "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia.

The desire of the leadership in both Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO has infuriated the Kremlin, which regards any further expansion of the Western military alliance as a threat to its security.

"Georgia's aspiration to join NATO . . . is driven by its attempt to drag other nations and peoples into its bloody adventures," Putin said in Vladikavkaz.



Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Bush in a telephone call that there would be no talks with Tbilisi until Georgian troops withdraw from the conflict zone.

Ossetians are an ethnic group separate from the country's dominant Georgians. Both are Christian, but each has its own language, culture and sense of history.

South Ossetia waged a war in the early 1990s to secure quasi-independence from Georgia. South Ossetian and Georgian forces have since regularly skirmished along an unofficial border. On Thursday, there were artillery exchanges.

The parties disagree over who began the escalation. Saakashvili said he ordered his forces in only after Russian troops crossed into South Ossetia in large numbers.

But Russia says that Georgia escalated the standoff by crossing the unrecognized frontier in an effort to regain control of the disputed territory. Russian officials said that a blistering assault on Tskhinvali devastated the city, killed hundreds of civilians and more than 10 Russian peacekeepers, and sparked the Russian response.

"Whatever part of Georgia is used for this aggression is not safe," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung in Washington, Tara Bahrampour in Tbilisi and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

Quoted Text

Russia border clash grows
Cease-fire call ignored; troops pour into region
BY MEGAN K. STACK AND PETER SPIEGEL
Los Angeles Times

    MOSCOW — Russia plowed closer to all-out war with Georgia on Saturday, sending warplanes to bomb deep inside the neighboring country and preparing to move more troops into the fray over a pro-Moscow separatist republic.
    Moscow brushed aside calls from the Georgian government for a cease-fire, insisting that the troops’ mission was to restore calm to the breakaway republic, called South Ossetia.
    “We are enforcing peace,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who reported that the death toll was at 1,500 and climbing. That figure could not be confirmed.
    Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, meanwhile, declared a state of war, and Georgia’s parliament voted to impose martial law.
    “We, on our own, cannot fight with Russia,” Saakashvili told the BBC. “We want immediate cease-fi re ... and international mediation.”
    Lavrov called the truce appeal a “cynical” move, given that the fighting began when Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia late last week.
MUCH AT STAKE
    The fighting threatens to inflame the volatile Caucasus region, which has emerged as a strategically crucial proving ground for Russia and the United States to vie for influence among former Soviet states. Tensions between Moscow and the West have sharpened in recent years, with an increasingly wealthy Russia striving to restore the superpower status it lost with the Soviet collapse.
    As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rushed home from the Beijing Olympics on Saturday, President Bush called on Moscow to respect Georgia’s sovereign territory.
    “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” Bush said, in the latest sign that his administration is lining up behind Saakashvili’s pro-Western government in the worsening conflict. “We call for an end to the Russian bombings.
    “I’m deeply concerned,” Bush said. “The United States takes this matter very seriously.”
    Bush was careful to urge both sides to stand down. But his remarks clearly placed the onus for the growing violence on the Kremlin, saying that bombings inside Georgia were occurring “far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia” and calling on Russia to cease such attacks.
    A senior U.S. official, speaking to reporters on the traditional diplomatic condition of anonymity, was even more blunt, saying that Russia was attacking Georgia with large strategic bombers and firing ballistic missiles into Georgian territory.
    “I, for the life of me, can’t imagine how that could be a proportional response to allegations that Georgians had fired upon Russian peacekeepers,” the official said.
    The official said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been in contact with her European counterparts Saturday and was contemplating sending an envoy to the region to help broker a cease-fire.
    But the official said the United State was not currently considering any military aid to the Georgians. The United States has dispatched military trainers to Georgia to help modernize the Georgian armed forces, and just under 150 are believed to be in Georgian territory.
    In Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian republic backed by Russia, fighters launched attacks on Georgian military positions. Like South Ossetia, Abkhazia won de facto autonomy in a bloody war with Georgia and is now leaning on Russia in the hopes of winning independence. The outbreak of fi ghting in Abkhazia raised the threat of a broader war in the Caucasus.
DRUMBEAT GROWING?
    In another move that a bigger, bloodier fight could be in store, Russia moved its Black Sea fleet closer to the Georgian coast Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported. Georgia has already called for a mass mobilization of all reservists and called its 2,000 troops home from Iraq to join the fight.
    After returning from Beijing, Putin installed himself in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, just over the border from South Ossetia. Once back on Russian turf, Putin was plainly at the helm of war planning — consulting with the military, denouncing Georgia and meeting with South Ossetian refugees.
    The prime minister accused Georgia of “genocide” of South Ossetians and pledged Russian funds to rebuild the capital of the breakaway republic. He also hinted that Georgia no longer had the moral authority to assert territorial control over the rebel republic.
    Ethnic tensions have brewed between Georgians and South Ossetians for generations. Critics say Moscow has stoked that animosity, especially in recent months, by supporting South Ossetia’s separatist fever and doling out Russian passports to residents of the breakaway republic.
    Each side is struggling to frame the other’s involvement as an invasion; each is striving to portray the other as the aggressor.
    “The reason we’re going to the region in such a rush is that we’re trying to figure out what’s going on down there,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow. “If you compare the Russian side with the Georgian side, it appears right away that something is really very wrong with the information we are receiving.”
    The fighting erupted in earnest early Friday, when the Georgian military opened a surprise assault on South Ossetia, apparently in the hopes of startling the republic, quickly seizing control and bringing the rebel region back under the control of Georgia.
    Russia, which has long maintained troops in both of Georgia’s breakaway republics, responded by sending its own soldiers pouring over the border into South Ossetia. The fighting quickly seemed to be focused between Georgia and Russia. Russian warplanes pounded Georgian military and industrial targets. Georgia shot down at least two Russian planes and attacked bases.
FAR-REACHING
IMPLICATIONS
    Bitterly blaming Georgian President Saakashvili for the bloodshed, Russia’s Lavrov also griped about countries that have backed Georgia — a thinly veiled swipe at the United States.
    “Those who have been supplying arms to Georgia, I believe they should feel part of the blame for the loss of life of civilians, including many Russian citizens and peacekeepers,” he said. “I think those who have been appeasing Mr. Saakashvili’s aggressive intentions and who helped create a feeling of impunity among the Georgian leadership should think twice.”
    The fighting comes against a backdrop of an increasingly acrimonious struggle between Washington and the Kremlin over the future of nations that were once part of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
    For much of the last two years, the Bush administration and Putin’s government have been engaged in an escalating war of words over U.S. plans to base a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russian officers have warned that Moscow would aim rockets at Polish territory if the United States proceeded with plans to construct interceptor missile sites there.
    In addition, the Kremlin has used its control of vast oil and gas reserves to put pressure on neighboring Ukraine, which like Georgia has sought to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moscow has occasionally shut off pipelines supplying Ukraine in what the pro-Western government of President Victor Yushenko has viewed as an attempt to bring Kiev back into Moscow’s fold.

Quoted Text

Saakashvili said Russian planes struck the Black Sea port of Poti, attempted to hit but missed a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to Turkey,

Quoted from Kevin March

Wars and rumors of wars...

Quoted Text

Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance

The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot.

As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half.

For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.

The retreat from Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, was as humiliating as it was sudden and dramatic. The Times witnessed scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, laden with soldiers, speeding through the town away from what Georgian officials claimed was an imminent Russian invasion.

Residents watched in horror as their army abandoned its positions after a day of increasingly aggressive exchanges of fire along the border with South Ossetia, the breakaway region now fully under Russian control.

Jeeps and pick-up trucks filled with Georgian soldiers raced through the streets, their occupants frantically signalling to civilians that they too should flee. The road out of Gori towards Tbilisi was a scene of chaos and fear as cars jockeyed with tanks for a speedy escape.

Soldiers left by any means available. Dozens of troops clung to cars on the back of a transporter lorry, while five other soldiers fled on one quad bike.

A tank had exploded on the mountain road leaving Gori, although it was unclear what had caused the blast. The Times passed an armoured car in flames, soldiers leaping from the roof of the vehicle. It had apparently caught fire while trying to bulldoze the tank’s burning shell out of the way. Columns of Georgian tanks and heavy weaponry filled the road during the 50-mile journey back to Tbilisi as thousands of soldiers, many looking totally demoralised, headed for the capital. Police sealed off the highway from Tbilisi, turning back the few cars that ventured towards Gori.

The Russian attacks were met with Georgian artillery fire towards South Ossetia, despite President Saakashvili’s statement that he had called a ceasefire. Reporters later witnessed at least six Georgian helicopters attacking targets in South Ossetia.

Elsewhere, Russian armoured personnel carriers swept into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, which Russian troops were also said to be attacking.

Georgia said that Russian forces seized police stations in Zugdidi, where reporters saw Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building and armoured vehicles moving through the town.

It was unclear last night where the tanks fleeing from Gori were heading, but many of the troops regrouped on the outskirts of Tbilisi as if preparing to make a stand to defend the capital. Some artillery pieces had also been sited on the approach road from Gori.

The panic had been triggered at about 5pm, when troops suddenly started pouring out of Gori. Officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that up to 7,000 Russian troops with tanks were heading for the town and that it was under imminent threat of bombardment. A similar panic had ensued on Sunday night as thousands of people poured from the town, in what turned out to be a false alarm. The fear this time was more tangible, the sense of threat more real, as Gori’s streets emptied rapidly.

Not everyone was prepared to leave, however. One man said: “This is my city. I will never leave it even if the Russians come here and kill me. Why should I go to Tbilisi and wait for them there?”

The Georgian Government, which appealed for international support, claimed later that Russian troops had entered Gori, although there was no independent confirmation of this.

As the noose appeared to tighten around Tbilisi, the US State Department evacuated more than 170 American citizens. Poland and several other former Soviet satellites voiced fears that the fighting indicated Russia’s willingness to use force to regain its dominance of the region.

Even at the height of the chaos, Georgia’s legendary hospitality never faltered. A 70-year-old woman named Eteri retreated into her home and appeared moments later to offer apples from her garden to her guests. “I am not afraid,” she said. “We have lived with the Russians for 100 years so why do we need this war now? I don’t want to be with America; I think we should live peacefully with the Russians.”

Quoted Text

Obama talks to Rice about Georgia, condemns Russia

Politico Staff
Sat Aug 9, 10:19 PM ET

Barack Obama broke from his Hawaiian vacation to discuss the clashes between Georgia and Russia with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Georgian president, his campaign reported.

Afterward, he issued a statement saying: "I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire."

Here is the campaign's Saturday night statement:

"Below is a statement from Sen. Barack Obama on Russia’s escalation of violence against Georgia:

“I just spoke separately with Secretary Rice and President Saakashvili about the grave crisis in Georgia. I told President Saakashvili that I was deeply concerned about the wellbeing of the people of Georgia.

“Over the last two days, Russia has escalated the crisis in Georgia through its clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Friday, Aug. 8, Russian military forces invaded Georgia. I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia. Both sides should allow humanitarian assistance to reach civilians in need. Russia also must end its cyber war against Georgian government websites. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.

“As I have said for many months, aggressive diplomatic action must be taken to reach a political resolution to this crisis, and to assure that Georgia’s sovereignty is protected. Diplomats at the highest levels from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations must become directly involved in mediating this military conflict and beginning a process to resolve the political disputes over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A genuinely neutral mediator — not the Russian government — must begin a process of negotiations immediately.

“The situation in Georgia also requires the deployment of genuine international peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The current escalation of military conflict resulted in part from the lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate UN mandate. Russia cannot play a constructive role as peacekeeper. Instead, Russian actions in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia appear to be intended to preserve an unstable status quo.”

Quoted Text

While U.S. media obsesses about John Edwards’ extramarital
shenanigans

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, August 8, 2008

Georgian forces, trained and equipped by the Pentagon and the U.S. government, killed 10 Russian peacekeepers early this morning in a provocation attack that has escalated into military conflict, but the subsequent corporate media coverage would have us believe that the U.S. and NATO-backed client state Georgia is a helpless victim, when in actual fact a far more nuanced geopolitical strategy is being played out.

Original reports early this morning detailed how Georgian forces had killed 10 Russian peacekeepers and wounded 30 others, which was the provocation for Russian forces to begin military operations, but the fact that Georgian forces were responsible for starting the conflagration has been completely buried in subsequent media coverage.

“Georgia and the Pentagon cooperate closely,” reports MSNBC, “Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to the Georgian military.”

The latest exercise, Immediate Response 2008, which took place last month, involved no less than one thousand U.S. troops working with Georgian troops in a war game scenario.

Moreover, the very “Rose Revolution” that brought the Harvard trained pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvilli to power in 2003 was wholly aided and abetted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Russian fury at U.S. support for Georgia and Georgia’s aspirations of becoming a NATO member have flared regularly in recent months, with tensions also rising following U.S. attempts to place missile defense shield technology in Poland and the Czech Republic, which most observers agree has nothing to do with Iran and is in fact aimed at countering Russian military superiority in the region.

In addition, the pro-Israeli news source DebkaFile reports that Georgian infantry units were “aided by Israeli military advisors” in capturing the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali earlier today.

DebkaFile elaborates on the true geopolitical significance behind today’s events.

DEBKAfile’s geopolitical experts note that on the surface level, the Russians are backing the separatists of S. Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as payback for the strengthening of American influence in tiny Georgia and its 4.5 million inhabitants. However, more immediately, the conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region.

The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines.

Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.

Former Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, told The Alex Jones Show today that the entire scenario smacked of a maneuver on behalf of the Neo-Con faction controlling the White House, led by Dick Cheney. Roberts said the date was precisely picked due to the distraction of the Olympics and Bush being out of the country.

Both Condoleezza Rice and John McCain have today demanded Russia withdraw its forces from Georgia immediately.

Meanwhile, the U.S. media networks are seemingly more interested in the complete non-story of John Edwards having an affair, while a conflict that could have devastating and thunderous geopolitical consequences fizzes on the verge of explosion.

As of early Friday evening, Edwards’ extramarital shenanigans were dominating CNN and Fox News, while Drudge also afforded the story more prominence that the situation in Georgia, which was also deemed less important than the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
.

Quoted Text

Aug 11, 2008 8:16 | Updated Aug 12, 2008 6:09
Georgian official to 'Post': Russia moving in on capital
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, AND AP


Russian forces are moving in on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and the Georgian military has received orders to gather en masse around the  capital and hold off the attack for as long as possible, Georgia's chargés d'affaires, Vladimir Konstantinidi, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday night.

"The Russians took control of [the strategic city of] Gori, which is west of the  capital, Tbilisi. It's the same distance as from Haifa to Tel Aviv," Konstantinidi said.
"They've started moving towards the  capital because that is their main target. So our forces are concentrating around a town [between Gori and Tbilisi]. They have to try and hold the Russians off for at least a while," he added.
Asked if he believed this to be a realistic goal, Konstantinidi said, "I don't think anything. I hope that we will succeed."


He said it was becoming apparent that the entire conflict had been "planned by Russia a long time ago."
"Now we can see that this was not a response to defend the separatist region of South Ossetia. This was actually a plan of aggression which has been prepared for years and over the last few months especially. It began with a provocation and is continuing into this war," he said.


"We're waiting for more action from our friends all over the world."
Some foreign ministers and officials are attempting to plan visits to Georgia in order to raise support for the independent country but Constantinidi said, "we are waiting for more assertive actions from the international community."
Despite continued calls for calm from the United States and other Western powers, Russia rejected a cease-fire with Georgia Monday after reportedly capturing Gori.
Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili told a national security meeting on Monday night that Russian troops had effectively sliced his country in half.
"[Russian forces] came to the central route and cut off connections between western and eastern Georgia," he said.
Russia denied seizing Gori and effectively cutting the country in half (since the city straddles Georgia's only significant east-west highway) according to the Russian news agency Interfax. But the ongoing hostilities threatened to widen the conflict, which Georgian leaders warn augers a Russian attempt to take over the country, even as Western powers are urging international mediation and respect for Georgia's territorial integrity.
Fighting also raged Monday around Tskhinvali, the  capital of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Swarms of Russian warplanes also launched new air raids across Georgia, with at least one sending screaming civilians running for cover.
The two-front battlefield was a major escalation in the conflict that blew up late Thursday after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Even as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday with EU mediators, Russia flexed its military muscle and appeared determined to subdue the small US ally which has been pressing for NATO membership. On Monday afternoon, Russian troops invaded Georgia from the western separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces were busy with fighting in the central region around South Ossetia.
The conflict is severely straining relations between Russia and the West, as Washington and Moscow have traded barbs while the situation on the ground intensifies.
At Georgia's request, the UN Security Council called an emergency session for later Monday - the fifth meeting on the fighting in as many days.
Meanwhile, the US helped the 2,000 or so Georgian forces deployed in Iraq to return home, eliciting an angry reaction for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said the move wouldn't help resolve the situation.
"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shi'ite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran [over] elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds - these leaders must be taken under protection."
The US has criticized such rhetoric from Putin for inflaming and feeding the conflict. The administration has also condemned the type and breadth of force employed by the Kremlin - including ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and raids into areas the US says are far from the provinces in contention.
"I've expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia, and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia," Bush told NBC Sports in an interview Sunday.
Still, the US is continuing to emphasize diplomatic engagement, with a State Department official saying Monday that, "The United States is responding to Georgia's humanitarian and reconstruction needs and is prepared to provide assistance as needed."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations spoke by telephone Monday and affirmed their support for a diplomatic solution, urging Russia to agree to international mediation and respect Georgian territorial integrity and condemning the loss of civilian life.
But Russba expert Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, assessed that Western diplomatic engagement will yield little.
"Russia is beyond the point of no return. The US and European diplomatic entreaties failed. Russian delivered a slap in the face to [EU President] Nicolas Sarkozy and President Bush. Now it has created a new geopolitical reality between the Black Sea and the Caspian," he said. "It will be extremely difficult to dislodge" Russia.
He said the Kremlin's aim is to establish control of the oil and gas resources in the region and that it would not be responsive to diplomatic pressure, while the US and other Western powers had not indicated a willingness to use military force to oppose Putin.
Georgians have expressed criticism of the US and its Western allies for not doing more to help, given Georgia's strategic decision to ally itself with the West and seek membership in NATO in the face of Russian displeasure.

But US senior officials indicated that the US had cautioned  Georgia against provoking armed conflict with Russia, despite the long-simmering territorial dispute and what it sees as Russian violations.

"President Saakashvili miscalculated and walked into a trap that the Russian president set for him," Cohen assessed. "We [the US] were warning Georgia that we did not want a military confrontation between  Georgia and  Russia. Now we can see why."
Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and  Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from  Georgia in the early 1990s - and both have close ties with Moscow.
Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Osseita's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.
The  Russia response was swift and overpowering - thousands of troops that shelled the Georgians until they fled Tskhinvali on Sunday, and four days of bombing raids across  Georgia.
Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.

Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 12 kilometers south of Tskhinvali inside  Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian Sukhoi warplane struck a house. The walls of neighboring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded, six of them seriously.
Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 meters away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.
Hundreds of Georgian troops headed north Monday along the road toward Tskhinvali, pocked with tank regiments creeping up the highway into South Ossetia. Hundreds of other soldiers traveled via trucks in the opposite direction, towing light artillery weapons.
Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday proposed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb. The EU envoys headed to Moscow to try to persuade  Russia to accept the cease-fire.
Saakashvili, however, voiced concern that Russia's true goal was to undermine his pro-Western government. "It's all about the independence and democracy of  Georgia," he said.
Saakashvili said  Russia had sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into  Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport. One Russian bombing raid struck the Tbilisi airport area only a half hour before the EU envoys arrived, he said.
Another hit near key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which carries Caspian crude to the West. No supply interruptions have been reported.
Abkhazia's separatists declared Sunday they would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.
Before invading western  Georgia, Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn demanded Monday that  Georgia disarm its police in Zugdidi, a town just outside Abkhazia. Still, he insisted, "we are not planning any offensive." At least 9,000 Russian troops and 350 armored vehicles were in Abkhazia, according to a Russian military commander.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees who fled Tskhinvali over the weekend said hundreds had been killed.
Many found shelter in the Russian province of North Ossetia.
"The Georgians burned all of our homes," said one elderly woman, as she sat on a bench under a tree with three other white-haired survivors. "The Georgians say it is their land. Where is our land, then?"

Quoted Text

Russia drives deeper into Georgia
Bush presses Moscow to accept immediate cease-fi re
BY CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA AND DAVID NOWAK
The Associated Press

    ZUGDIDI, Georgia — Russian tanks roared deep into Georgia on Monday, launching a new western front in the conflict, and Russian planes staged air raids that sent people screaming and fleeing for cover in some towns.
    The escalating warfare brought sharp words from President Bush, who pressed Moscow to accept an immediate cease-fire and pull its troops out to avert a “dramatic and brutal escalation” of violence in the former Soviet republic.
    Russian forces for the first time moved well outside the two restive, pro-Russian provinces claimed by Georgia that lie at the heart of the dispute. An Associated Press reporter saw Russian troops in control of government buildings in this town just miles from the frontier and Russian troops were reported in nearby Senaki.
    Georgia’s president said his country had been sliced in half with the capture of a critical highway crossroads near the central city of Gori, and Russian warplanes launched new air raids across the country.
    The Russian Defense Ministry, through news agencies, denied it had captured Gori and also denied any intentions to advance on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
    The western assault expanded the days-old war beyond the central breakaway region of South Ossetia, where a crackdown by Georgia last week drew a military response from Russia.
    While most Georgian forces were still busy fighting there, Russian troops opened the western attack by invading from a second separatist province, Abkhazia, that occupies Georgia’s coastal northwest arm.
    Russian forces moved into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Black Sea, and seized police stations in Zugdidi, just outside the southern fringe of Abkhazia. Abkhazian allies took control of the nearby village of Kurga, according to witnesses and Georgian officials.
    U.N. officials B. Lynn Pascoe and Edmond Mulet in New York, speaking at an emergency Security Council meeting requested by Georgia, also confirmed that Russian troops have driven well beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, U.N. diplomats said on condition of anonymity because it was a closed session. They said Russian airborne troops were not meeting any resistance while taking control of Georgia’s Senaki army base.
    “A full military invasion of Georgia is going on,” Georgian Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters later. “Now I think Security Council has to act.”
    The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, told CNN late Monday that Russian forces were cleansing Abkhazia of ethnic Georgians.
    “I directly accuse Russia of ethnic cleansing,” he said. At the U.N. on Friday, each side accused the other of ethnic cleansing.
    By late Monday, Russian news agencies, citing the Defense Ministry, said troops had left Senaki “after liquidating the danger,” but did not give details.
    The new assault came despite a claim earlier in the day by a top Russian general that Russia had no plans to enter undisputed Georgian territory.
    Saakashvili earlier told a national security meeting that Russia had also taken central Gori, which is on Georgia’s only east-west highway, cutting off the eastern half of the nation from the western Black Sea coast.