Bush: Russia must reverse 'irresponsible' Georgia move

US President George W. Bush on Tuesday demanded that Russia reverse its "irresponsible decision" to recognize Georgia's rebel regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

"The United States condemns the decision," he said in a statement from his Texas ranch, warning that "Russia's action only exacerbates tensions and complicates diplomatic negotiations" on the future of Georgia.

Leading the West's outraged response, Bush said Moscow's diplomatic gesture violated a French-brokered August 12 ceasefire pact, as well as "numerous" UN Security Council resolutions backed by Russia in the past.

"We expect Russia to live up to its international commitments, reconsider this irresponsible decision, and follow the approach set out in the six-point agreement," said the US president.

"In accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions that remain in force, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia, and they must remain so," he said.

Despite the escalating war of words between Moscow and the West and a deepening freeze in relations that has some warning of a new Cold War, Bush did not lay out any specific retaliatory steps.

But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a flight from Israel to Ireland, spoke Tuesday with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on the "latest Russian actions" regarding Georgia, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Absent significant, concrete reprisals, Russia has shrugged off warnings of growing isolation from the international community since Russian troops rolled into Georgia August 8 after Tbilisi sought to retake South Ossetia by force.

After a televised address announcing diplomatic recognition for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Medvedev shrugged off talk of a new Cold War, saying: "We're not afraid of anything."

France, as holder of the rotating European Union presidency, called Moscow's move "contrary to the principles of the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia" and warned of unspecified "consequences."

In Tbilisi, Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili assailed the Russian move as an "attempt to wipe Georgia from the map" and promised to wage a "peaceful struggle" to win back the territories.

Fears of an escalation were rife, with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner saying: "We fear a war and we don't want one."

His German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier said all sides were "playing with fire" and urged: "The spiral of provocation must stop, and immediately."

In Crawford, White House spokesman Tony Fratto warned that Russia's "irrational" moves in the crisis increased suspicion that Moscow cannot be trusted, and said any effort to win UN Security Council approval for recognizing the regions as independent was "dead on arrival."

Fratto dismissed any Russian charges that Washington was re-arming Georgia's battered military under cover of humanitarian aid shipments to the former Soviet republic, saying: "It's wrong, it's ridiculous."

"I can assure you that these are purely humanitarian aid shipments that are going into Georgia and nothing else," said the spokesman, who also brushed aside any talk of sending a senior US envoy to Moscow.

"There's nothing ambiguous about Russia's obligations here," he said. "The Russians know their obligations. And I don't know that it requires anyone to go to Russia to inform them of it."

Fratto also said he had seen no "degradation" in Russo-US cooperation on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

But "Russia is making, I would say, a number of irrational decisions," the spokesman said. "It leads all of us, the international community, to question Russia's commitment to its word."

"And we hope that they hear the loud voices from the international community and understand that it's not in their long-term interest to take these kinds of actions," said the spokesman.