NATO chief slams Russian troop positions on route to Georgia

Sep 15, 2008, 10:18 GMT

London/Moscow - NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Monday said Russian plan to keep troops in Georgia's breakaway regions was 'unacceptable' and 'hard to swallow.'

He blamed oversights in an EU-brokered peace deal for not demanding the full withdrawal of troops to their bases in Russia before the war with Georgia last month.

The NATO secretary-general made the comments in an interview with the Financial Times shortly before he travelled to Tbilisi on Monday to show the alliances openness to including Georgia.

'If the Russians are staying in South Ossetia with so many forces, I do not consider this as a return to the status quo,' Scheffer told the British paper.

'The option of keeping Russian forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia is not acceptable,' he said.

A day after signing a peace accord last week, Moscow said near 8,000 troops would stay in the separatists, where its peacekeepers patrolled under a UN mandate before the conflict.

A decision, Scheffer said, was 'difficult to swallow.'

The object of the two-day Georgia trip by ambassadors from the 26 NATO-member states will be ongoing talks - insistently backed by the United States - on extending Georgia alliance membership.

Despite the urgency placed in Georgia's accession talks by anger and fear over Russia's actions in the recent conflict, NATO members are far from decided on further expansion into the former Soviet territory.

Western Europe - Germany, France, Spain and Italy - beg to delay adding Georgia and Ukraine under its security umbrella fearing a nightmare scenario in which alliance troops could face off with Russian forces in eastern Europe.

Russia and NATO froze relations last month, and Scheffer, who has been particular critical of the Kremlin over the conflict, said 'a speedy revival of the NATO-Russia Council will not be easy, I think.'

At the same time, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was on a tour of Georgia's separatist region of Abkhazia and South Ossetia marking the rift with the West since Russia unilaterally recognized both provinces claims to independence.

Lavrov slammed Scheffer's politics, speaking in the Abkhaz capital of Sukhumi on Sunday.

'Of course I've heard the declarations he makes, declarations that are inappropriate for the leader of such a serious organisation,' he was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying.

Russia's top diplomat on Monday was due in the South Osset capital of Tskhinvali, where the fighting erupted on August 8.

In Brussels, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana affirmed the European Union was ready to replace Russian troops in Georgia with its own civilian observers within the next two weeks.

But many in Europe have been feeling burned by the rushed peace treaty negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the EU rotating presidency.

Vagueness in the accord has allowed Moscow to say it provides only for the 200-strong EU mission to deploy in 'buffer zones,' effectively giving the EU observers a role of safeguarding the boundaries of Georgia's separatists.

Those regions are part of Georgian territory, the EU says, but an agreement to tackle the status of the regions in peace talks was also dropped by Moscow in the latest pact that provides for peace talks in Geneva next month.

Some Russian forces had pulled out from position deep inside Georgia at its Black Sea port of Poti over the weekend in accord with Monday's deadline for the first phase of a withdrawal.