Nato freezes Russian ties over Georgia

Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said yesterday the alliance was freezing regular contacts with Russia until Moscow had fully withdrawn its troops from Georgia in line with a peace deal.

The military alliance also agreed to upgrade contacts with Tbilisi but stopped short of any move to accelerate its efforts to join Nato, an ambition which enraged Russia even before the two-week-old conflict over Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region.

"We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual," the 26 Nato states said in a joint declaration issued after emergency talks in Brussels.

"The Alliance is considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the Nato-Russia relationship," it added.

The short statement did not explicitly refer to a US call for the alliance to suspend contacts within the six-year-old Nato-Russia Council (NRC), but Mr de Hoop Scheffer said such contacts could not take place under present conditions.

"We are not abandoning the Nato-Russia Council but as long as Russian forces are basically occupying a large part of Georgia I cannot see a Nato-Russia Council convening at whatever level," he told a news conference.

"But I should add that we certainly do not have the intention to close all doors in our communication with Russia," he said after several key European allies including Britain and Germany expressed doubts about cutting off links with Moscow.

The move drew sharp condemnation from Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the alliance of bias and wanting to support a "criminal regime" in Tbilisi.

Months of tension between Georgia and Russia erupted on August 7, when Tbilisi sought to regain control of South Ossetia. Russia, which backs the separatists, launched a massive counter-offensive that extended well into Georgia.

A column of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles left the strategically important Georgian town of Gori, but Russian officials said the main withdrawal demanded by the West would not happen for three more days.

The Nato declaration did not refer to specific ways in which the alliance could curtail tentative steps to strengthen ties with Russia that were started in the late 1990s.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied Washington wanted to isolate Moscow and dismissed suggestions that tougher actions on Moscow had been blocked by European capitals, viewed by analysts as anxious not to upset a major energy supplier.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, whose country has long backed Georgia's aspirations to join Nato, said he believed Russia's actions in the conflict was sparking an "intellectual sea change" in the West over Moscow's behaviour in the region.

"It's not every day that a sovereign country is invaded and wrecked ... The events of the last few weeks should make us all realise that Russia means business," he told Reuters.

Meanwhile later in the evening President Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday that by August 22 Russia will pull its troops in Georgia back to the positions set out in a French-brokered ceasefire agreement.

Mr Medvedev told French leader Nicolas Sarkozy by telephone that "by 22 August... a part of the peacekeepers will be pulled back to the temporary security zone," the Kremlin said in a statement.

"The remaining contingent that was used to reinforce the peacekeepers will be pulled back to the territory of South Ossetia and to Russia," the Kremlin said.