At UN: Confirmation of Russia's Georgia advance

[August 12, 2008]  UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Georgia brought another last-ditch appeal Monday to the United Nations Security Council to stop Russia's advancing army, which U.N. officials confirmed has driven beyond Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The officials, B. Lynn Pascoe and Edmond Mulet, advised the council behind closed doors that non-peacekeeping Russian airborne troops were entering U.S.-allied Georgia from Abkhazia, and were not meeting any resistance while taking control of Georgia's Senaki army base, council diplomats said on condition of anonymity because it was a closed session.

"A full military invasion of Georgia is going on," Georgian Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters after the end of the two-hour council meeting that it had requested. "Now I think Security Council has to act."

It was the fifth such emergency session since Thursday. In that time Russia's ferocious retaliation against Georgia's initial move to control separatist South Ossetia has quickly broadened to nearly all-out war.

Since Georgia isn't a council member, it can can only attend a formal meeting such as the one held privately Monday.

Council diplomats said the session was marked by heated exchanges between Alasania and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who was repeatedly asked whether it was Russia's intention to topple Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's fledgling democratic government in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

"We in Russia, we cannot see how we can do business with him," Churkin told reporters afterward. "We make no secret of that."

France also circulated a draft resolution Monday that would have the council call for "the immediate and unconditional cessation of hostilities, and the complete withdrawal of Russian and Georgian forces to their positions prior to August 7."

The 15-nation council is expected to take up the draft proposal Tuesday.

The proposed text also calls for immediate negotiations and expresses the council's intention "to take further action, as appropriate, to help bring about and implement a peaceful and durable solution to the crisis."

Finally, the text would have the council express dismay that "the hostilities are occurring during the Olympic Truce" that the U.N. General Assembly had urged all nations to observe during the current Olympic Games in Beijing.

The U.S. also has been pushing to include language condemning Russia's actions. Any such proposal would be largely symbolic since Russia is one of five council members with the power to veto it. The others are the U.S., Britain, China and France.

[Associated Press; By JOHN HEILPRIN]

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