Georgia held emergency talks with Nato and European Union allies on Friday, urging them to remain firm in pressing Russia to drop plans for closer ties with two rebel Georgian regions. Moscow announced on Wednesday it would establish legal links with Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which border Russia in the Caucasus.
Georgia calls it a move towards annexation and Nato immediately urged Russia to reverse the decision. Georgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for European Integration Georgy Baramidze raised concerns with Nato Deputy Secretary-General Claudio Bisogniero and was to meet ambassadors from several Nato allies and EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Baramidze called the Russian step "very, very dangerous" and a threat not just to Georgia but to all Europe and Nato. "This is a decisive moment," he told a news conference.
"The Russians have crossed the red line and Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community must react...to prove that they are willing to protect young democracies."
He added: "We want our friends to have a dialogue with Russia to persuade Russia to reverse this decision. We believe a united Europe and a united Euro-Atlantic community will be heard in the Kremlin.
"We will not allow Europe to be divided by the spheres of influence, we will never ever allow the 1930s to be repeated," Baramidze said in an apparent reference to Europe's failure to stop Nazi Germany's expansionist course before World War Two. "There is a political and moral obligation of the whole of Europe to protect democracy, to protect human rights and to protect international law." He reiterated a call for the European Union to send a police force to the breakaway regions to replace Russian troops.
The Russian move came two weeks after Nato leaders vowed that Georgia, a former Soviet republic, would one day join the alliance, although Nato declined to give an immediate plan to start membership preparations.
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