Bush invites leader of Georgia for talks

The talks, being held at the White House on Wednesday against the backdrop of an increasingly heated global power struggle over energy, were initiated by Bush just a few days after the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, held a tense meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

For Saakashvili, the talks with Bush represent a welcome indication that his small Black Sea country is being taken seriously at a time when it is being harried by Russia on a number of fronts - notably energy supplies and ties to NATO - and is irritating Moscow by forging new alliances in an effort to break out of dependency.

For Bush, the talks are not only a salute to Georgia's role in a new pipeline that bypasses both Russia and Iran. The meeting also sends a message that, as Saakashvili put it, the G-8 gathering should be more than a photo opportunity and become "an instrument in solving things."

"The months have shown how intertwined energy and security policy are," Saakashvili said in an interview before leaving Georgia.

"Russia is in the process of defining itself," he said. "They are a resurgent power and they want to know how they can express themselves. Is it at the expense of dominating the policy of their neighbors? Is it by using energy muscle? Or is it, as I would think, to modernize itself, to invest in education and infrastructure, to really make Russian investment competitive?"

Though it has almost no gas or oil of its own, Georgia's location on the Black Sea has made it an important transit route for energy coming into Europe. A British Petroleum-operated oil pipeline that started pumping in May links Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia and is the first to connect the huge oil reserves of the Caspian directly to the Mediterranean.

While additional pipelines are still under discussion, Georgia has already felt the benefit of world interest.

"We just sold our energy sector, which nobody wanted to take for one dollar last year," Saakasvhili said. In addition to that transaction - the sale for $317 million last month of Georgian hydroelectric plants and distribution grids to a Czech company, Energo-Pro - there is "much more money committed to investments in this sector," he said.

Georgia's role in the wrangling over energy came into focus in January after Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine over a price dispute, rattling West Europeans, who depend on Russian gas. When explosions in southern Russia later that month severed gas pipelines and a main electricity cable to Georgia, European speculation that Russia might be using energy as a weapon grew stronger. While Moscow said terrorists were behind the blasts, Saakashvili blamed the explosions on a deliberate Russian attack.

"There was nothing new for us in that situation," Saakashvili said, noting that Russia had switched off gas supplies to Georgia during the winter in 2000 "because of Georgia's lack of cooperation on Chechnya." Georgia has since sought to diversify its energy sources.

The United States, too, has been seeking alternate routes for Caspian energy, hoping to offset domination of the energy sector by Russia.

But more than the pipeline is at stake in Bush's courting of Georgia.

"There is a very strong feeling in Washington that Russian policy on its Soviet neighbors is not just assertive but aggressive," said a former State Department official. "Georgia is not the only case, but it may be the classic one."

One thing rankling Russia is Georgia's desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Saakashvili called one of the country's top goals at his inauguration in January 2004. Two and a half years later, Georgia is expecting to hear that it has made it to the fast- track stage of membership, despite foot- dragging by some NATO countries, among them France and Germany.

A problem in the NATO negotiations has been the so-called frozen conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, separatist enclaves within Georgia's borders that are aligned with Russia. Saakashvili said that assertive moves by Russia were creating problems there.

"If people who want to stir up trouble smell that they can stop NATO entering this region, they will do their best to stir this trouble," Saakashvili said. "What we are seeing in South Ossetia," where Russians have been installed in office and Russian nationals are moving in, he added, "is called annexation."

The view that Russia is stoking the regional conflicts in order to dampen Georgia's prospects of joining NATO is shared in Washington, analysts and officials say. Russia "links NATO enlargement with deployment of U.S. bases to the area, and they see this as a threat to their security," said Sabine Freizer, Caucasus Project Director at the Brussels- based International Crisis Group.

Georgian analysts see the fact that G-8 foreign ministers discussed the frozen conflicts during talks in Moscow last week as a sign that Bush will most likely raise the matter with Putin.

Bush, whose administration backed Saakashvili during the Rose Revolution in 2003 and who is grateful to Georgia for sending troops to Iraq, has strongly backed Georgia for admission to NATO, and he received a warm welcome on a visit to Tbilisi in May last year. A few months later, Tbilisi forced two Russian military bases off Georgian territory.

Saakashvili also antagonized Russia by meeting the presidents of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova in May to revitalize a regional organization establishing a free-trade zone and customs union, and discussing the alliance's potential for building new pipelines and for working with NATO and the European Union.

While the Kremlin is concerned about former Soviet republics moving further from its orbit, Saakashvili said the regional alliance was "much less about Russia" than "about the interests of these countries together." Still, he noted that the grouping was important for energy security because it allowed new transit routes for oil and gas.

"My vision is we should have Russia as an important supplier, the most important supplier, as we should have other sources," he said. "Our experience is when you have alternatives, you also have Russia which is a good partner."

The standoff between the two countries took a new twist this spring when Russia banned two of the largest and most popular imports from Georgia, wine and mineral water. Russia contended that the products did not meet basic health standards; Saakashvili called the ban an "economic embargo."

Saakashvili dismisses Putin's drinks gambit as ineffective. "It's not going to ruin Georgia's economy. Georgia is going to get stronger and more competitive. People are going to get more inventive."

The country is finding new markets, he said, adding: "Everything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

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