NATO suspends regular contacts with Russia

20/08/2008

Russia came under mounting pressure to withdraw its troops from Georgia immediately, as NATO decided on Tuesday to suspend formal contacts with the country until it shows full respect for the peace plan it signed on August 12th.

(AFP, Reuters, DPA, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, Telegraph, VOA - 20/08/08; AP, DPA, FT, BBC, CNN, NATO, UN News Centre - 19/08/08)

A column of Russian tanks moves towards Tskhinvali, Georgia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said all but 500 Russian troops will be out of Georgia by the weekend. [Getty Images]

Calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, NATO decided on Tuesday (August 19th) to suspend formal contacts with Moscow until it fulfils its commitments under an EU-brokered cease-fire signed a week earlier.

"We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual," the 26-nation Alliance said after an emergency meeting of the member states' foreign ministers in Brussels. "We call on Moscow to demonstrate -- both in word and deed -- its continued commitment to the principles upon which we agreed to base our relationship."

Under the six-point cease-fire deal, Russia agreed to withdraw its military forces to the lines they held prior to the outbreak of the conflict on August 7th. Seven days after the agreement, however, there was still no sign of a serious pullout.

Foreign correspondents in Georgia reported on Tuesday a convoy of seven armoured carriers, three tanks and several other military vehicles were leaving the strategically important town of Gori. At the same time, however, Russian troops continued to build trenches in a nearby location and reportedly captured 21 Georgian soldiers in the Black Sea port city of Poti, which remained under Russian control.

Speaking after Tuesday's meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made it clear that there will be no formal contacts with Russia until it fully complies with the August 12th peace plan.

"As long as Russian forces are occupying large parts of Georgia, I cannot see the NATO-Russia Council meeting," he told reporters in Brussels.

The conflict has forced more than 158,000 people to flee their homes, CNN reported.

In a show of support for Georgia, whose NATO entry bid Moscow strongly opposes, the Alliance said it would review any requests for assistance it may have and promised to establish a NATO-Georgia council.

Accusing Russia of seeking to strangle Georgia and its economy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed that any attempts by Moscow to redraw Europe's post-cold war map would fail.

"There will absolutely be no new line," she said, in an apparent reference to the former Iron Curtain.

Russia, meanwhile, stepped up its rhetoric, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing the Alliance of protecting a "criminal regime".

Later Tuesday, Russia rejected a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia.

Also on Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, by telephone that most of the Russian forces would withdraw from Georgia by Friday but that some troops would remain in a buffer zone around South Ossetia.