Putin hints at U.S. presence in Georgia

MOSCOW – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday he had reason to believe U.S. personnel were in the combat zone during the recent war in Georgia, adding that if confirmed, their presence suggested “someone in the United States” provoked the conflict to help one of the candidates in the American presidential race.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili called the claim “ridiculous,” likening it to Putin saying that “extraterrestrials were also there.”

In Putin’s first extended remarks defending Russia’s military intervention in Georgia, which has drawn international condemnation, he blamed the Bush administration for failing to stop Georgian leaders from launching the Aug. 7 attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia that sparked the war.

Speaking on CNN, Putin argued that the U.S. policy of training and supplying weapons to the Georgian army had emboldened the country to abandon long-standing negotiations over the future of South Ossetia and to try instead to seize the region by force, an assault that resulted in the deaths of Russian soldiers stationed there as peacekeepers.

Putin suggested that U.S. military advisers were working with Georgian forces that clashed with the Russian army, a prospect he described as “very dangerous.”

“Even during the Cold War, during the harsh confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, even more so between our military personnel,” he said in the interview, portions of which were also broadcast on Russian national television.

“Ordinary experts, even if they teach military affairs, should not do so in combat zones, but in training areas and training centers,” he added.

Putin said he based his assertions on information provided to him by the Russian military, but he offered no evidence and cautioned that his “suspicions” required further confirmation.

Earlier in the day, a senior Russian military official said at a news briefing that Russian troops had recovered an American passport in the rubble of a village near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, where a Georgian special forces unit had been based during the war.

“What was the purpose of that gentleman being among the special forces, and what is he doing today, I so far cannot answer,” said Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the general staff, holding up an enlarged, color photocopy of the passport. He identified its owner as Michael Lee White, a resident of Houston, born in 1967, state-owned Vesti television reported.

Saakashvili, in an interview with the Washington Post, dismissed the passport report as “typical tricks.”

“I wish we had Americans and American weapons, but it’s not the case,” he said. “They are living in a parallel world, with a parallel perception. If you say a lie in Russia, it becomes the truth the next day on TV.”

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Putin’s allegations were “patently false” and sounded “not rational.” She added: “It also sounds like his defense officials who said they believe this to be true are giving him really bad advice.”

Saakashvili said that American military training provided to Georgia’s army in recent years had focused on peacekeeping and counter-insurgency warfare.

About 100 U.S. military advisers were said to have been stationed in Georgia before the war began, and they have kept a low profile since Russian tanks and bombers routed Georgian forces in a five-day campaign that left them in control of about a third of Georgian territory.

Putin said if U.S. citizens were present in the combat zone, they would have been “performing official duties, and they may only do this on orders from their supervisors, not at their own initiative.”

“If my conjecture is confirmed, then it raises the suspicion that someone in the United States deliberately created this conflict in order to worsen the situation and create an advantage … for one of the candidates for the post of president of the United States,” he said. “And if this is a fact, it is nothing other than the use of so-called administrative resources in a domestic political struggle, and in the worst, bloodiest form as well.”

When the CNN correspondent, Matthew Chance, expressed skepticism, Putin argued that the Bush administration faced difficulties in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as economic difficulties.

“A small, victorious war is needed,” Putin said. “And if you don’t succeed, it’s possible to shift the blame on us, turn us into the enemy against the backdrop of rah-rah patriotism to rally the country again around certain political forces. I am surprised that you are surprised at what I say. It’s obvious.”

Putin did not specify which U.S. presidential candidate he believed the Georgian crisis was intended to help, but the official RIA-Novosti news agency quoted experts as saying it had boosted the campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.