NATO holds war games in Georgia

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia yesterday after heavy criticism from neighboring Russia and a brief mutiny in the Georgian military. Russia - which regards NATO as a Cold War relic with intrusive ambitions to expand into former Soviet countries - angrily dismissed Georgian accusations that Tuesday's mutiny was a Moscow-engineered coup attempt.

Further straining relations with the military alliance, Russia expelled two NATO officials, both Canadian citizens, working in Moscow in a tit-for-tat move after two Russian diplomats were kicked out of Brussels, apparently over a February spy scandal, reported The Associated Press. "We naturally were forced to react," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Wednesday, adding that Russia was simply playing by the "rules of the game."

Tension soars

Russia's outspoken ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, lashed out at the alliance Wednesday in an interview published in the daily Izvestia. "This organization is becoming more and more unpredictable.... The alliance can't seem to behave in a respectable, stable and decent way," Agence France-Presse quoted Rogozin as telling the newspaper. Canada said it "strongly regrets" Russia's decision and has summoned Russia's ambassador for an explanation, as NATO described the move as "unfortunate" and "counterproductive."

Russia's ties with NATO have for years been fraught with tension, in part over efforts by tiny Georgia and neighboring Ukraine to gain membership in the Western alliance. Russia fiercely objected to its southern neighbor hosting the monthlong NATO exercises, which President Dmitry Medvedev has called "an overt provocation."

The exercises involve at least 1,100 soldiers from more than a dozen NATO and non-NATO states in command and field exercises. A Georgian defense ministry spokesman responsible for the drill, Col. Giorgi Kakiashvili, said they were going forward as planned. "Everything is going ahead according to the schedule. Most of the participants have already arrived," he told AFP. Some 15 countries were taking part, after Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia and Armenia bowed out.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Georgian soldiers surrendered after a daylong standoff at a tank battalion headquarters near Tbilisi, during which they barred the defense minister and refused to follow orders. Some Georgian opposition members called the mutiny a charade, cooked up by the beleaguered Saakashvili to rally support. For weeks, opposition organized protesters, demanding the resignation of Saakashvili.