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Georgia snaps diplomatic ties with Russia

West faces stark choice

AFP, AP, Tbilisi
Georgia has broken off diplomatic ties with Russia and ordered Russian diplomats, to leave Tbilisi, Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told AFP yesterday.
"Georgia is cutting diplomatic ties with the Russian Federation," he said. "In such situations, Russian diplomats MU have to leave Georgia."
Georgia is to withdraw all of its diplomats from its embassy in Moscow in "the coming days," a foreign ministry spokeswoman told AFP on Friday.
"Within the coming days, Georgia will withdraw aU diplomats from its embassy in Moscow. Consular relations with the Russian Federation will be maintained," said the head of the foreign ministry's press department, Khatunalosava.
Russia's invasion of Georgia presents the West with a difficult choice: Punish Moscow by kicking it out of clubs like the Group of Eight or pursue a strategy of placating it that could invite further bullying in places like Ukraine, the Baltic states or Moldova.
So far, the West's actions have not matched its tough words.
Other than canceUing some joint military exercises and decrying Moscow's actions, European democracies and the United States have found little consensus, and Moscow has seized on the opening on Tuesday formaUy recognising the independence of South Ossetia and another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.
The US and Britain have talked tough with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warning Moscow that the West will not sit idly by like it did during the Cold
War invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
On Wednesday, her British counterpart, David Miliband, reacted to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's claim that his nation is "not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War."
"The Russian president says he is not afraid of a new Cold War," Miliband said during a visit to Ukraine, where he was on a mission to find allies for a coalition against Russian aggression. "We don’t want one. He has a big responsibility not to startone."
Miliband suggested Thursday that an unwelcome chapter had begun in European history: "We are in a situation which marks a clear end to the relative and growing calm in and around Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union," he said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp, radio.
Despite die rhetoric, analysts say a return to the Cold War is unlikely, with several looking to another period in history as a guide the 19th century’ imperialism practiced by czarist Russia as it sought to counter Britain and Turkey and dominate the Black Sea.
"The current crisis in the Caucasus does not mark the return of the Cold War, nor is it likely to mark the start of open warfare between Russia and the West," Dominique Moisi, a political analyst with the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, wrote in a recent syndicated article. "It is, more simply, the return of the traditional imperialism practiced by the Russian Empire more than a century ago.
Cold War or no, there is real fear particularly in Eastern Europe that Russia's ambitions go beyond Georgia, and that its actions demand more than lip service.
Several Eastern European countries have joined Washington and London's call for tough action like suspending negotiations on an EU-Russia cooperation deal, blocking WTO membership and kicking Moscow out of the Group of Eight nations. But Germany, Italy and others have stressed the need for caution.
The West's first major chance for a unified response to Moscow's latest move comes Monday, when leaders of the 27 European Union countries gather in Brussels for a three-hour emergency meeting. Observers say not to expect much.
"Russia knows that when it comes to conducting a serious foreign and security policy, Europe is all mouth,”
Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told European Voice, a Brussels-based news weekly. "I doubt whether anything tougher than strongly worded communiques will ever be employed. ”
Hanging over the crisis as always are energy resources.
Russia supplies the EU with about a third of its oil and about two-fifths of its natural gas, and it can literally turn off the tap if it so chooses. Germany, one of the largest European customers for Russian gas. has close ties with Russian companies, and German and Russian companies are working on a multibillion dollar gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea.
The close ties have led to a particularly cautious approach from Europe's most powerful economy.
"I recommend above all reacting prudently." said Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US who now chairs the annual Munich security conference.
"Among our partners, there are indeed some who apparently are not so clear about the fact that ... anyone who goes out through a door must know how to get back in," Ischinger said in an interview with Deutschlandradio Kultur.