NATO criticizes Russia’s military action in Georgia

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.

Even so, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in a midafternoon news conference that the United States had gotten all that it had sought in the morning session.

Russian officials said they would start withdrawing troops Monday, but there was scant evidence of such a pullback out of Georgia proper. Russian troops acting as peacekeepers have long been based inside two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that went to war with the central government in the early 1990s and have been largely autonomous ever since.

Lavrov said today that the pace of the withdrawal would depend on how Georgia meets vague obligations.

“The withdrawal of troops has begun,” he told reporters, according to the Interfax news agency. “It will be measured against how effectively Georgia fulfills its obligation to return its troops to their permanent bases and how peacekeeping forces are being deployed in the security zone.”

Georgians allege that Russia’s moves suggest it is trying to cut off the capital in the east from critical Black Sea ports in the west in an attempt to politically and economically strangle this country of 4.5 million over the coming weeks. Russia has shut off the country’s main east-west highway, severed the primary rail line and damaged the seaport.

Despite the hostilities, Russia and Georgia exchanged prisoners of war today at a handoff near Igoet, 25 miles west of the capital.

The Georgian soldiers, appearing haggard but otherwise in good health, said they were kept in Vladikavkaz, in the North Ossetian region of southern Russia, and Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Moscow handed over 15 Georgian captives in exchange for five Russians.

Georgian officials also buried seven soldiers, six of them unknown, at a somber ceremony on a hilltop west of the capital.

“It’s a very sad feeling, but it’s also a feeling of pride,” said Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia, who attended the ceremony. “They were the ones defending this country.”

 paul.richter@latimes.com

 daragahi@latimes.com

Richter reported from Brussels and Daragahi from Tbilisi.