US, Allies Weigh Punishment for
Russia
By MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scrambling to find ways to punish Russia for
its invasion of pro-Western Georgia, the United States and its
allies are considering expelling Moscow from an exclusive club
of powerful nations and canceling an upcoming joint NATO-Russia
military exercise, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.
But with little leverage in the face of an emboldened Moscow,
Washington and its friends have been forced to face the
uncomfortable reality that their options are limited to mainly
symbolic measures, such as boycotting Russian-hosted meetings
and events, that may have little or no long-term impact on
Russia's behavior, the officials said.
With the situation on the ground still unclear after Russian
President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday ordered a halt to military
action in Georgia, U.S. officials were focused primarily on
confirming a ceasefire and attending to Georgia's urgent
humanitarian needs following five days of fierce fighting,
including Russian attacks on civilian targets.
"It is very important now that all parties cease fire,"
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The Georgians have
agreed to a ceasefire, the Russians need to stop their military
operations as they have apparently said that they will, but
those military operations really do now need to stop because
calm needs to be restored."
At the same time, however, President Bush and his top aides were
engaged in frantic consultations with European and other nations
over how best to demonstrate their fierce condemnations of the
Russian operation that began in Georgia's separatist region of
South Ossetia, expanded to another disputed area, Abkhazia, and
ended up on purely Georgian soil.
"The idea is to show the Russians that it is no longer business
as usual," said one senior official familiar with the
consultations among world leaders that were going on primarily
by phone and in person at NATO headquarters in Brussels where
alliance diplomats met together and then with representatives of
Georgia.
For now, the Bush administration decided to boycott a third
meeting at NATO on Tuesday at which the alliance's governing
board, the North Atlantic Council, was preparing for a meeting
with a Russian delegation that has been called at Moscow's
request, officials said.
On the table for future action is the possible cancellation or
U.S. withdrawal from a major NATO naval exercise with Russia
that is scheduled to begin Friday, the officials said. Sailors
and vessels from Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. were to
take part in the annual Russia-NATO exercise aimed at improving
cooperation in maritime security.
The exercise, which is being hosted by Russia this year, began a
decade ago and typically involves around 1,000 personnel from
the four countries, the officials said.
In the medium term, the United States and its partners in the
Group of Seven, or G-7, the club of the world's leading
industrialized nations that also includes Britain, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy and Japan, are debating whether to
effectively disband what is known as the "G-8," which
incorporates Russia, by throwing Moscow out, the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no
decisions have yet been made and consultations with other
countries involved are still ongoing.
Bush spoke on Monday and Tuesday with fellow G-7 leaders as well
as the heads of democratically elected pro-Western governments
in formerly Eastern Bloc nations, some of which are among NATO's
newest members and have urged a strong response to Russia's
invasion of a like-minded country.
On Monday on his way home from the Olympics in China, Bush
talked with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus and Polish President Lech Kaczynski. He
then spoke to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the White
House said. On Tuesday, he spoke with Italian Premier Silvio
Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Rice, who returned early to Washington late Monday from vacation
to deal with the crisis, held a second round of talks with
foreign ministers from the Group of Seven countries in which
they were briefed on European Union mediation efforts led by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met Tuesday with Medvedev
in Moscow.
"They believe that they have made some progress and we welcome
that and we certainly welcome the E.U. mediation," Rice told
reporters at the White House.
Despite the flurry of activity, there was still uncertainty
about whether Russia had in fact halted its military action in
Georgia with reports of continued shelling of civilian and
military sites.
The State Department on Tuesday recommended that all U.S.
citizens leave Georgia in a new travel warning, saying the
security situation remained uncertain. It said it was organizing
a third evacuation convoy to take Americans who want to leave by
road to neighboring Armenia. More that 170 American citizens
have already left Georgia in two earlier convoys.
Just hours after Bush said in a White House address that the
invasion had "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the
world" and demanded an end to what he called Moscow's "dramatic
and brutal escalation" of violence, Medvedev said he had ordered
an end to military action.
But Georgia insisted that Russian forces were still bombing and
shelling and White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday it
was too early to comment on Medvedev's move. "We are trying to
get an assessment of what a halt means and whether it is taking
place, of course," the spokesman added.
Typifying the administration's dilemma, a planned late-morning
White House briefing by national security adviser Stephen Hadley
was postponed "until further notice" due to ongoing developments
in Georgia and in Moscow, where Sarkozy was meeting with Russian
officials on behalf of the West.
The State Department on Tuesday recommended that all U.S.
citizens leave Georgia in a new travel warning, saying the
security situation remained uncertain. It said it was organizing
a third evacuation convoy to take Americans who want to leave by
road to neighboring Armenia. More that 170 American citizens
have already left Georgia in two earlier convoys.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Anne Gearan and Pauline
Jelinek contributed to this report.
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