CNN: NATO: RUSSIA NOT HONORING CEASE-FIRE TERMS

The United States is between Iraq and a hard place when it comes with how to deal with Russia.

Russia is refusing to honor the cease-fire and are actually digging in for what looks like it will be a long stay in Georgia.

NATO: Russia not honoring cease-fire terms

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- NATO has accused Russia of failing to honor the full terms of the cease-fire agreement brokered by the European Union last week aimed at ending the fighting in Georgia.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/19/georgia.russia.war/index.html

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Tuesday that Russian forces were still inside Georgia despite the agreement to withdraw -- and despite Moscow saying they had begun pulling out Monday.

"We do not see signals of this happening," Scheffer said. "There can be no business as usual with Russia under the present circumstances."

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said NATO's accusations were "biased."
Lavrov said NATO was taking the side of Georgia, whose forces he said had failed to withdraw to their barracks.

"They blame us as if there were no requirements for the Georgian side in the six points" of the cease-fire agreement, he said. "I mean the requirements to bring back their troops to the places where they are on a permanent basis."

Speaking later in Tbilisi with British Foreign Secretary David Milliband, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili called the NATO statement encouraging, saying Russians "are not and have never been after just small pieces of Georgian territory."

"They want to demoralize my people and put them into panic," he said. "They want to not only get rid of the Georgian government but get rid of all idea of Georgia's independence and freedom."

Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces, said Tuesday that some troops remained in place to protect South Ossetia's borders.

"Every day that goes by after the deadline ... is a day that the world can see that Russia is not living up to its word," Milliband said. "With every commitment and every failure to live up to the commitment, international pressure will grow."

NATO plans to set up a NATO-Georgian Commission to oversee Georgia's relationship with the international alliance, supervise its bid to join the alliance and assist Tbilisi with support in the wake of the Russian invasion, Scheffer said.

A team of 50 NATO staff members will to go to Georgia to help assess the needs of the Georgian military, help with the resumption of air traffic and assist in the investigation of cyberattacks on the former Soviet republic's computer networks.

The conflict began when Georgia launched a large-scale attack on South Ossetia on August 7 after a week of what it said were separatist attacks on Georgian villages that border the enclave. Russian troops responded in force the next day, pouring across the international border with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles and driving into Georgia from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another Russian-backed separatist territory.

The fighting has devastated parts of Georgia and South Ossetia, with many casualties reported. The U.N. refugee agency said that more than 158,000 people had been displaced by fighting in Georgia, mostly from districts outside the breakaway territories where the fighting began.

Watch residents of Georgian villages flee »

Both Russia and Georgia accuse the other of ethnic cleansing during the conflict.