Putin suggests U.S. may have provoked Georgia conflict

The Cold War-style barbs, hurled at long range from the two capitals and face to face at the United Nations, underscored the breakdown of diplomatic efforts to end Russia's 3-week-old military intervention in the former Soviet republic.

Russia faced international isolation two days after it recognized the independence of a pair of breakaway Georgian regions at the center of the conflict. It won no support for the move at meetings of the U.N. Security Council and an Asian alliance that comprises Russia, China and four Central Asian nations. But neither has the Security Council taken any action against Russia, holding six emergency sessions without producing a single statement or resolution.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced that the European Union would consider sanctions against Russia when its leaders meet next week.

Russia sent troops into Georgia on Aug. 8 after Georgian forces moved against South Ossetia, a pro-Russian enclave that broke from Georgia's government in the early 1990s. The brief war ended with a Russian occupation to enforce the separation from Georgia of South Ossetia and the other breakaway region, Abkhazia.

Russian leaders said they intervened after Georgian troops killed Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers who were based in South Ossetia.

In an interview Thursday with CNN, Putin suggested that the United States had encouraged Georgia's offensive and that there perhaps had been an American presence in the combat.

At a news briefing, the deputy chief of Russia's military general staff, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, showed off an enlarged color photocopy of what he said was the passport of a U.S. citizen, Michael Lee White, born in 1967. He said it had been found in a South Ossetian village among items belonging to Georgian forces.

The U.S. Embassy in Georgia said it had no information on the matter, the Associated Press reported.

Putin told CNN: "If that is confirmed, it's very bad. It's very dangerous."