Georgian leader to talk conflicts with Bush

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili will meet George W. Bush this week to give the US leader his view of his tense stand-off with Russia, which hosts the heads of the G8 group of rich nations later this month.
Analysts said the timing of the talks ensured that Saakashvili's view of ties with Georgia's former masters in Moscow would be fresh in Bush's mind when he went to the Group of Eight summit.
Most important to the Western-educated president, a close US ally struggling to align his ex-Soviet nation with Nato and the West, is the fate of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - Georgian provinces ruled by rebel governments propped up by Moscow.
"The situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be the main subject at the meeting along with the issue of the uneasy relations between Georgia and Russia," an official close to Saakashvili told Reuters.
The two presidents will also discuss energy security, Georgia's desire to join Nato and the pace of Georgian economic and political reforms when they meet in Washington on July 5, the official said.
Georgia's ties with Russia have been tense since the fall of the Soviet Union and recently hit a new low when Moscow banned imports of wine and mineral water, key Georgian exports, for health reasons.
Georgia, which accuses Russia of trying to bully it into abandoning its pro-Western course, says the bans are politically motivated. Saakashvili came to power in 2004 after the peaceful "Rose Revolution", promising to move his country closer to the West. Bush has since praised Georgia as a "beacon of democracy".
Saakashvili has pledged to regain control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and says Russia - which has troops in the regions and supplements their budgets - is trying to undermine Georgian sovereignty by supporting their de facto independence.
Russia will host the G8 summit in St Petersburg later in July. Washington says it wants a peace plan for Georgia's breakaway regions on the agenda but Moscow has resisted this.
"Saakashvili cannot demand that Bush urge Putin to treat Georgia in a democratic way and also to play a constructive role in solving the Georgian conflicts," said Alexander Rondeli, political analyst from the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. "But I think Bush will anyway try to remind the Russian president that it's necessary to help Georgia."