Bush aid pledge as Russian manoeuvres continues

A Russian military convoy defied a cease-fire agreement and rolled through a strategically important city in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which claimed fresh looting and bombing by the Russians and their allies.

US president George Bush said a massive aid package was on the way for tens of thousands uprooted in the conflict and demanded that Russia “keep its word and act to end this crisis”.

“The United States stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected,” Mr Bush said sternly in Washington.

One day after the Kremlin and its smaller neighbour agreed to a French-brokered ceasefire to end the dispute over two pro-Russian breakaway territories, the pact appeared fragile at best.

Dozens of Russian trucks and armoured vehicles left the city of Gori, some 20 miles south of the separatist region of South Ossetia and home of a key highway that divides Georgia in two, and moving deeper into Georgia.

Soldiers waved at journalists and one jokingly shouted, “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.”

The convoy roared southeast, toward the Georgian capital, but then turned north and set up camp about an hour’s drive away from it.

Georgian officials said the Russians had looted and bombed Gori before they left. Moscow denied the accusation.

As confusion reigned on the first day of the cease-fire agreement, Mr Bush called a speech to express concern about reports the Russians were already breaking it.

He said he was sending US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first to France and then to Tbilisi to reinforce US efforts to “rally the world in defence of a free Georgia”.

For her part, Dr Rice said: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbour, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”

Mr Bush said a huge US aid effort was under way, including American naval forces and C-17 military cargo planes, to get clothes, blankets, medicine and other supplies to refugees.

The European Union agreed to consider deploying European peacekeeping monitors to the area.