Nato-Russia tensions mount as Georgia exercises kick off

TBILISI (AFP) - Nato kicked off controversial military exercises in ex-Soviet Georgia on Wednesday as tensions spiked in relations with Russia over Moscows expulsion of two alliance diplomats.
Launched a day after Georgia accused Russia of backing a brief military mutiny, the exercises have deeply strained ties between the Cold War-era rivals.
Russias Foreign Ministry said it had expelled two Canadian diplomats working as Nato representatives in Moscow following an unfriendly act by Nato against Russian envoys to Nato.
It referred to Natos expulsion of two Russian envoys from the alliances Brussels headquarters in a spy scandal.
Canadas Ambassador was summoned to Russias Foreign Ministry and handed a note informing him of the expulsion of the head and deputy head of the Nato representative office in Moscow in response to an unfriendly act by Nato against Russian envoys to Nato, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The explanation was a reference to Natos expulsion of two Russian envoys accredited at the alliances headquarters in Brussels for alleged involvement in a spy scandal, a charge Moscow has furiously denied.
Russias outspoken Ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, hammered home Moscows dim view of the alliance in an interview published in the daily Izvestia. This organisation is becoming more and more unpredictable.... The alliance cant seem to behave itself in a respectable, stable and decent way, Rogozin told the newspaper.
A spokesman for Canadas embassy, Nicholas Brousseau, told AFP that Canada strongly regretted Russias tit-for-tat decision to expel the two diplomats and said Nato was interesting in patching up ties with Moscow.
Canada and Nato allies have been seeking ways to re-engage Russia. The decision to terminate the accreditation of Nato officials is counterproductive to this effort, said Brousseau.
Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer criticised the Russian expulsions as unfortunate and counterproductive.
Nato very much regrets the Russian action and does not consider there to be any justification for it, he said. Officials in Ottawa said Canada strongly regrets the expulsions and that Russias Ambassador had been summoned to explain.
However Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov played down the expulsions as he met Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski later, saying: We want normal, mutually beneficial, mutually respectful partnership with the Euro-Atlantic alliance.
He said the expulsion of Nato diplomats was an inevitable response to the alliances own expulsion of Russian envoys.
We were forced to react. Excuse me, but those are the rules... and our Nato colleagues, at least those who initiated the expulsion of our diplomats, couldnt have expected anything less, Lavrov told journalists.
Russia fiercely objects to its southern neighbour hosting the month-long Nato exercises, which President Dmitry Medvedev has called an overt provocation.
The Nato exercises involve at least 1,100 soldiers from 10 Nato countries and six of the alliances partner countries. Armenia backed out of participating in the wake of Tuesdays mutiny.
On Wednesday a Georgian Defence Ministry spokesman responsible for the Nato exercises, Col Giorgi Kakiashvili, said participants were gathering for planning meetings and full-scale command exercises would begin on Monday. The exercises have two components, Nato headquarters said. The first - Cooperative Longbow - is a command post exercise done almost exclusively on computers in the Georgian capital.
The second - Cooperative Lancer - which starts on May 18 and runs to June 1, is a field exercise involving around 400 troops and is designed to provide training on peacekeeping operations.
In Paris, Georgian National Security Council Secretary Eka Tkeshelashvili said she was awaiting the outcome of an investigation to assess whether Russia had a hand in the alleged mutiny.