US, ALLIES WEIGH PUNISHMENT FOR RUSSIA
By Matthew Lee

AP
12 Aug 08

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 wealthy
nations and have scrapped plans for an upcoming joint NATO-Russia
military exercise, Bush administration officials said.

But with scant 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 Tuesday.

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
cease-fire 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
cease-fire, 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.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe
confidential conversations among the leaders of other nations,
said European and other leaders have been blunt with Russia that
it must withdraw its forces. Russian leaders have said they do not
plan a long-term occupation, the official said. The official was not
specific about whether Russia has offered a timeline for withdrawal.

"People are saying, ‘You know you cannot stay,’" the official said. "We
have been hearing from Russia, ‘We don’t want to stay.’"

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, off icials said.

In addition, a senior defense official said the U.S. has decided to
dump a major NATO naval exercise with Russia that was scheduled to
begin Friday.

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. But the official said there is no
way that the U.S. could proceed with it in the midst of the Georgian
crisis.

The naval exercise began a decade ago and typically involves around
1,000 personnel from the four countries, officials said. The Pentagon
also is looking at a variety of ways it could respond to humanitarian
needs in Georgia, but officials have not yet made any final decisions.

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.

Discussions are also taking place on whether to revoke or review
the May 2007 invitation to Russia to join the 30-member, Paris-based
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which consists
primarily of established European democracies, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions
have yet been made and=2 0consultations with other countries involved
are still under way.

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 called 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.

Later, Saakashvili told reporters that he accepted the cease-fire
plan negotiated by Sarkozy.

Despite the flurry of activity, there was still uncertainty about
whether Russia had in fact halted its military action in Georgia,
with reports of conti nued 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.

Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Anne Gearan, Pauline Jelinek
and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.