| US sends aid flights to Georgia |
Published By: Mathew White
On Thursday 14 August 2008 |
US military planes are delivering aid to crisis-torn Georgia, where up to 100,000 people are now homeless following the conflict with Russia.
US President George W Bush ordered humanitarian supplies to be delivered on military aircraft and said the US expects Russia to allow humanitarian supplies into Georgia and ensure that all lines of communication and transport remain open.
Mr Bush has also urged asked Moscow to stick to the peace deal brokered by France.
"The United States of America stands with the democratically-elected government of Georgia," he said, adding: "We insist that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to hold talks in the Georgian capital Tbilisi later.
Her trip comes six days into a conflict that has shifted from artillery, tank and gun battles at the weekend to increasingly sharp diplomatic and political exchanges out of Washington, Moscow and Tbilisi.
Meanwhile, Russian tanks have rolled into the Georgian port town of Poti accompanying trucks carrying troops to the port, although Russia denied its forces were there.
Moscow has also denied violating a ceasefire and rejected claims its troops and armour had advanced on Tbilisi or looted Gori.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has urged France, which is mediating in the conflict, to encourage Tbilisi to sign a binding agreement not to attack its separarist regions.
Human Rights Watch, a US-based organisation with staff in Georgia, said its onsite researchers had witnessed looting of ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia, the rebel province at the heart of the current conflict.
The fighting in the Caucasus, an important transit for Caspian oil, has unnerved the US, Nato and the European Union.
Russia says 1,600 civilians died when Georgia attacked South Ossetia, though the figure has not been independently verified.
Moscow's general Staff says it lost 74 soldiers in the fighting, with 171 wounded and 19 missing.
Tbilisi puts deaths on its side at over 175, with hundreds injured. That figure does not include South Ossetia.
