MOSCOW/BERLIN, Aug 23: A top Russian general accused Nato on Saturday of using humanitarian aid deliveries to Georgia as “cover” for a build-up of naval forces in the Black Sea.

“Under the cover of needing to deliver humanitarian goods, Nato countries continue to boost their naval grouping,” Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of general staff, told a news conference in Moscow.

“In addition to the Spanish and German frigates that entered the Black Sea basin on Aug 21, yesterday a Polish frigate and a destroyer of the US navy passed the Bosphorous,” he said.

“I don’t think that this will help stabilise the situation in the region.” Nato says it is holding long-planned exercises, involving US, German, Spanish and Polish vessels, in the Black Sea and that this is not linked to the conflict in Georgia.

The exercises, which will include visits in Bulgaria and Romania, began on Thursday and are due to end on Sept 10.

A US frigate is due to join in the exercises later this week, a Nato spokeswoman said.

In addition, the US navy is sending several ships, led by the destroyer USS McFaul, to Georgia with what the Pentagon says are deliveries of humanitarian aid.

Russia on Friday said it had withdrawn most troops from inside Georgia to two Russian-controlled separatist regions in the north of the country.

However, western capitals and Georgia say Russia is violating a peace accord by keeping some troops deployed in strategic areas.

Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has warned Russia that the Georgia conflict is putting at risk its place in the Group of Eight industrialised nations and its accession to the World Trade Organisation, a report said.

“Until now, the US supported Russia’s integration in the world community. We have admitted Russia to the Group of Eight and we have saluted and encouraged its wish to join the WTO. All this is now at stake,” said Gutierrez in an interview with the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel.

Asked whether the United States would try to exclude Russia from the G8 and block its accession to the WTO, Gutierrez said: “In this crisis situation, we must not dismiss options...

“The Russian government must reflect on its interests,” he said according to a translation of the remarks made to the German-language magazine.

On Aug 13, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Russia it faced isolation if it refused to respect an agreed ceasefire in the Georgian-Russian conflict.

Russia on Friday said it had withdrawn most troops from inside Georgia but had left behind hundreds of “peacekeepers” in key positions in the west and in the north, near the two Moscow-controlled separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

—AFP