Bush Warns Russia to Halt Military Activities in Georgia

WASHINGTON — President Bush demanded Wednesday that Russia "cease all military activities" in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and warned Moscow not to block U.S. military efforts to deliver aid to the embattled country.

While stopping short of threatening a military response to the continued fighting, Bush sent a giant U.S. military plane to Georgia as the first of what he called a "vigorous and ongoing" effort to deliver medical and humanitarian aid to a country where an estimated 2,000 have been killed and 100,000 left homeless in six days of fighting.

"The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia," Bush told reporters at the White House. "We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected."

Despite promising to end military action as part of a day-old cease-fire, Russian forces were blocking key ports and roadways, Bush said, and threatening the Georgian capital of Tibilisi.

"Those operations must stop and must stop now," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in heated rhetoric that recalled the confrontational era when Washington and Moscow squared off in the Cold War.

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it," said Rice, a Soviet expert. "The message is that Russia has perhaps not accepted that it is time to move on from the Cold War."

After months on the boil, the South Ossetia and Abkhazia areas of Georgia exploded last week, with Russian and Georgian troops facing off over control of two areas that have threatened independence from Georgia. Both sides have blamed the other for sparking the fighting.

In six days of fighting, however, Russian forces have "brutally" gone beyond the disputed territory to threaten Georgia proper, Rice said, hours before she left for Paris to meet with French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and led negotiations on a fragile cease-fire between Russian and Georgian forces.

From Paris, Rice was to travel later this week to Tibilisi, "where she will personally convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government, said Bush, and "to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia."

With some of Moscow's critics calling for Russia to be expelled from the Group of Eight industrial democracies as punishment, Bush warned that "Russia is putting its aspirations at risk," by pressing its week-old military campaign in defiance of the French-brokered cease-fire.

In a flurry of telephone diplomacy, Rice spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while Bush spoke with Sarkozy and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who accused the United States and its West-European allies of green-lighting the Russian military action with faint criticism last week.

"I feel that they are partly to blame," Saakashvili said, according to the Associated Press.

"Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible ././. but so are those who fail to react," he said. "In a way, Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us."

From the campaign trail, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain threw their support behind the administration.

"I welcome President Bush's decision to send aid to the people of Georgia, and Americans stand united in support of the men and women who will carry out this humanitarian mission," Obama said in a statement.

He echoed the administration's call for Russia to honor the cease-fire and warned Moscow not to attempt a Georgian land-grab.

"Russia must not use this moment to consolidate a position that violates Georgia's territorial integrity, or to violate the human rights of the people of Georgia," he said.

McCain called for NATO to convene an emergency session "to demand a cease-fire" and begin discussions on the possible deployment of a NATO peacekeeping force to Georgia.

And McCain, who has previously called for Russia's expulsion from the Group of Eight, said NATO should reassess its relationship with Russia under the "Partnership for Peace" arrangement that made partners of the former Cold War foes during the Clinton administration.

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance binds the United States with Western Europe in a defense alliance meant to counter the Soviet threat. NATO has endured, and expanded, since the 1991 collapse of the former Soviet Union.