NATO holds Georgia war games, Russia critical

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili meanwhile accused Russia of trying to foment a coup after a local tank battalion mutinied against his government on Tuesday. Moscow denied involvement.

The mutiny ended without bloodshed but cast a shadow over the start of the month-long exercises, in which more than 1,000 soldiers from NATO countries, including the United States and allies, will practice a crisis response and train peacekeepers.

French and Canadian soldiers were seen setting up command headquarters at the Vaziani air force base, formerly used by Russian forces, before field exercises next week. The next few days will spent preparing the exercises, officials said.

Russia has strongly criticized the exercises on its southern flank as "muscle-flexing". Its envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said on Tuesday the alliance would be better off holding the manoeuvres "in a madhouse" than in a country where troops were "rioting against their own president".

Saakashvili's domestic political opponents, who have paralyzed central Tbilisi with weeks of protests demanding he resign, questioned the Georgian government's explanation for the mutiny.

"There are many versions of what really happened, but the one offered by the authorities is the least credible," said Tina Khidasheli of the opposition Republican Party.

The war games, a year in the planning, have increased tension between Russia and NATO, just as the two sides resumed formal contacts suspended after Moscow's war with Georgia.

Russia crushed a Georgian military attempt to retake the pro-Moscow separatist region of South Ossetia last August, routing Tbilisi's army and prompting criticism in the West.

DIPLOMATS EXPELLED
NATO said this month's exercises should not be misused.

"Georgia is just hosting the exercise and nobody should interpret the exercise in a different way and use it for other purposes," a NATO spokeswoman said.

Further souring the mood, Russia announced the expulsion of two Canadian staff at NATO's information centre in Moscow on Wednesday -- a response to the Western military alliance's decision to throw two Russian diplomats out of Brussels last week over a spying scandal.

Isabelle Francois, director of the Information Centre and one of those expelled, declined to comment when asked about the situation by telephone. Georgia's government said the mutiny at a tank base east of Tbilisi was part of a Russian attempt to disrupt the NATO exercises and foment a wider rebellion against Saakashvili.

Russia said the accusations were "insane" and accused Saakashvili of trying to shift the blame for weeks of opposition protests demanding he resign over his record on democracy and last year's military defeat.

Military experts in Tbilisi suggested the tank battalion might have fallen victim of the tussle between the government and the opposition on the streets of the capital.

The NATO exercises are being held a few kilometers from the Mukhrovani 'rebel' tank base.

"The multi-national training will go ahead in the planned timeframe," Georgian Colonel Nugzar Tsintsadze said. "There was no threat."

Soldiers will practice command drills in a simulated NATO-led crisis response operation before peacekeeping training in the second half of May.

NATO, which invited many non-member countries to take part as well, insists the exercises pose no threat to Russia. They are seen as a gesture of solidarity with Georgia, whose NATO membership ambitions have been put on hold since the August war.

Russia fiercely opposes membership for Georgia and Ukraine as an encroachment on its ex-Soviet sphere of influence.

Armenia, Russia's closest ally in the South Caucasus, on Tuesday joined Moscow's friends Kazakhstan, Serbia and Moldova in pulling out of the NATO exercises they had been invited to join despite not being members of the alliance.

Georgia and Azerbaijan, also not in NATO, are the only former Soviet republics left taking part.