The Telegraph
The United States has been left diplomatically isolated after European members of NATO moved to reject an American proposal to scale back ties with Moscow following Russia's invasion of Georgia.
US diplomats attending an emergency NATO summit in Brussels had called on the alliance to suspend ministerial meetings with Russia, held twice a year, as a way of demonstrating the West's disapproval of the war.
But other members of the alliance, including Britain, rejected the plan, saying that it would be foolish to isolate Russia. Instead diplomats released their strongly-worded statement, stopping short of concrete action, at least for now.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, implicitly criticized Washington's proposal to suspend the Nato-Russia council, established six-years ago to improve dialogue between Moscow and the West, as short-sighted.
"I am not one that believes that isolating Russia is the right answer to its misdemeanours," he said. "I think the right answer is hard-headed dialogue." A French diplomat, however, signaled that Nato was getting fed up with Russia's failure to carry out repeated pledges to withdraw its troops from Georgian territory and warned that the time could come for a re-examination of the West's ties with Moscow.
"We are at risk of entering, if there is not a very rapid evolution on the ground, into a relationship which will be of a different nature to what it was until now," he said.
Russia, however, seemed unfazed by the mounting criticism. Its troops smashed their way into the Black Sea port of Poti, blockaded it and then took 22 Georgian servicemen prisoner.
Russian forces last week used explosives to sink Georgian naval ships and coastguard vessels in the port as part of what appears to be a plan to damage the country's civilian and military infrastructure............
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