NATO warships make Russia leery

Medvedev charges that U.S. is bringing weapons instead of aid

MOSCOW -- Russian commanders said Wednesday that they are growing alarmed at the number of NATO warships sailing into the Black Sea, conceding that NATO vessels now outnumber the ships in their fleet anchored off the western coast of Georgia.

As attention turned to the balance of naval power in the sea, the leader of the separatist region of Abkhazia said he would invite Russia to establish a naval base at his territory's deep-water port of Sukhumi.

And in a move certain to anger Russia, Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, said he would open negotiations with authorities in Moscow to raise the rent on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, which is in Ukraine's predominantly Russian province of Crimea. The United States is pursuing a delicate policy of delivering humanitarian aid on military transport planes and ships, to illustrate to the Russians they do not fully control Georgia's airspace or coastline.

The policy has left American and Russian naval vessels maneuvering in close proximity off the western coast of Georgia, with the Americans concentrated near the southern port of Batumi and the Russians around the central port of Poti. It has also left the Kremlin deeply suspicious of American motives.

"What the Americans call humanitarian cargoes -- of course, they are bringing in weapons," Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told the BBC in an interview on Tuesday, adding: "We're not trying to prevent it."

The White House dismissed all assertions that the Pentagon is shipping weapons under the guise of humanitarian aid, calling them "ridiculous."

Apparently testing Russian assurances that their forces have opened the port of Poti for humanitarian aid, the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi had said a Coast Guard cutter, the Dallas, would try to dock there today, well within a zone controlled by the Russian military during the war.

The Dallas, however, docked instead at Batumi, to the south. It was carrying 34 tons of humanitarian aid. Georgian military officials said the other port may have been mined, The AP reported.

Russian officials have said their forces are now out of the city but that they are still occupying positions at checkpoints just to the north. Russian ships are also patrolling off the coast.

In Moscow, the naval maneuvering was clearly raising alarms. Russian commanders said the buildup of NATO vessels in the Black Sea violated a 1936 treaty, the Convention of Montreux, which they maintain limits to three weeks the time noncoastal countries can sail military vessels on the sea.

It was unclear how many NATO ships are in the Black Sea.