United States yet to ask Turkey to let hospital ships through: US embassy

"The United States is considering a lot of actions" to help Georgia amid its conflict with Russia over South Ossetia, the spokeswoman of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Kathy Schallow, told AFP.

"But as far as I know, we have not made a formal decision about sending those two ships," she said, adding that "a formal request" for their passage to the Black Sea via the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits was not made either.

The Turkish foreign ministry said Ankara was cooperating with countries sending assistance to Georgia and "no request with the purpose of humanitarian aid or repatriation has been denied so far."

Without a reference to the U.S. ships, the statement said the transportation of assistance by sea was regulated under the terms of the 1936 Montreux Convention, which governs international traffic through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.

Turkey's NTV news channel reported that the two ships tonnage exceeded the limits set by the convention.

General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that Washington’s plans called for sending two U.S. Navy hospital ships to Georgia, among other assistance.

Unnamed U.S. officials told McClatchy Newspapers that the two hospital ships likely to go -- the Comfort and the Mercy -- would take weeks to arrive and complained that Turkey was "sluggish and unresponsive" in granting them a permission to sail through the straits to the Black Sea.