SO anxious was Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili for support from the fledgling Obama administration that even though he had not been invited to make a speech he raced to the annual Munich security conference in February to try to meet the key guest, US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Witnesses reported Obama's deputy initially sought to avoid a handshake or even eye contact. But the Georgian's bullying won through, obliging Biden to arrange a chat the following day.

Saakashvili followed this forced encounter by telling journalists “It is obvious that during all types of negotiations between the United States and Russia, Georgia will be high on the agenda.” Not so. Obama's trip to Moscow last month made it clear that last August's war between Georgia and Russia neither revived the cold war nor had any impact on the trend towards greater US-Russian co-operation that Obama promised during his election campaign. Georgia is a sideshow.

The reason is clear. A year on from the five-day war, most European governments as well as the Obama administration agree Saakashvili bears most of the blame. As Nino Burjanadze, once a close Saakashvili ally, put it, “Saakashvili, deeply unpopular at home, launched a desperate and doomed military adventure in South Ossetia, so providing the Russians with an excuse to reoccupy bases they lost only three years ago”.

Biden's latest encounter with the Georgian president, in Tbilisi last month, reconfirmed the shift of tone from the Bush era. Although Biden made the usual noises about recognising Georgia's territorial integrity and rejecting any Russian sphere of influence, no formal agreements were made.

The trip was only arranged to show that Georgia had not been totally forgotten. Unless there were secret agreements as yet unreported, Biden disappointed Saakashvili by giving no clear promise to re-arm Georgia's battered forces. He told the Georgian parliament the US would modernise the country's military “with the focus on training, planning and organisation”. Uncoded, that could mean greater US oversight over the army and tighter control over any repetition of last August's folly.

Biden's officials also used the visit to deny Saakashvili's hints that US monitors would soon join the European Union team that patrols the Georgian side of the border with the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The EU has confirmed no such plans exist, and that the issue will not be discussed until the autumn, if at all.

That is welcome news. While

Russian officials oppose any US role as “extremely harmful”, that is not the best reason for the EU to reject it. The EU must be able to operate independently of the US, and the Georgian mission is a good place to show it can, especially as it was European rather than US mediation that achieved a ceasefire last August.

Nato aspirations

Biden's call for democratic reforms, and his meeting with opposition politicians in Tbilisi, also struck a different note from the Bush period. While Bush pressed for Georgia to enter Nato while turning a blind eye to Saakashvili's attacks on civil liberties, the new US administration wants an end to repression while turning a blind eye to Georgia's Nato aspirations.

The stalemate between Saakashvili and his local opponents continues, and the situation on the ground remains deadlocked. The villages where Georgians once lived inside South Ossetia have been ethnically cleansed and razed. The exodus of Georgians from Akhalgori, the last mixed area, carries on remorselessly. Diplomatically, the Russians have got their way by achieving the withdrawal of the observer mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which used to work in and around South Ossetia, as well as the UN mission that covered Abkhazia, Georgia's other breakaway region.

In theory this could raise the risk of border clashes, but for the moment that is out of the question. This post-Soviet conflict is back to being “frozen”. Russia has won all it wanted (short of Saakashvili's resignation), and has no interest in provoking new clashes. Saakashvili's forces are too weak to take action.

Can nothing be done to improve matters? Tom de Waal, a respected analyst of the Caucasus, argues that the West should open links to Abkhazia without recognising its independence by taking “status-neutral” measures like supporting a direct shipping route between Abkhazia and Turkey, and getting Georgia to support it. This would not help Georgia recover Abkhazia, but it would lessen Abkhaz ties to Russia.

Steps of this kind would be useful, but they leave the big picture unchanged. Tens of thousands have lost their homes and hundreds their lives in a war for which Saakashvili - in spite of some slaps on the wrist from Obama and Biden - still has not had to pay a serious price.—Dawn/Guardian News & Media