NATO criticizes Russia's military action in Georgia
The alliance vows not to hold meetings with Russia until it withdraws from Georgia. Russia calls the statement from the group's emergency meeting 'biased.'
BRUSSELS — The Western military alliance today criticized Moscow for its "disproportionate" military action in Georgia and vowed that relations with Russia would change because of it.
But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gathering stopped short in an emergency meeting of agreeing to rearm the beleaguered state as Russian troops continued potentially provocative military operations throughout Georgia and showed little signs of abiding by an agreement signed in Moscow over the weekend to withdraw from the country.
Russian reaction to the NATO summit was harsh. Russia's foreign minister blasted the statement as "un-objective and biased," while Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow's envoy to NATO, dismissed it as irrelevant. "The mountain gave birth to a mouse," he said.
In the Black Sea city of Poti, Russian soldiers in armored vehicles stormed into the country's main civilian port and arrested 20 soldiers guarding the site, said Interior Ministry officials in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
Russian armored vehicles also tried to enter a Georgian military base in the western city of Satchkere before they were turned back by police, a Georgian Foreign Ministry news release said. The Russians allegedly told the men at the base they would be back with reinforcements.
Foreign ministers of the NATO issued a statement calling for Russia to withdraw forces to positions before the Aug. 7 outbreak of hostilities between the two countries and expressed their support for the sovereignty of Georgia. They said they would hold no meetings of a NATO-Russia coordinating group until Russian troops withdrew, and they threatened unspecified further steps.
"There can be no business as usual with Russia under the present circumstances," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary-general.
Georgia's drive to become a NATO member over Moscow's strenuous objections enraged the Kremlin, analysts said. An Aug. 7 Georgian attack on Russian positions in the disputed region of South Ossetia prompted the Russian incursion.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized the statement because "it does not say a word about how it all began and why it had all happened," according to the Interfax news agency.
Although the alliance announced it would set up a new coordinating group with Georgia, it left undecided the sensitive subject of whether it would rebuild the badly damaged Georgian military.
