Russia occupies Georgia, world pressure mounts

By Matt Robinson

GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russian troops and armor deployed around three Georgian towns on Thursday, as international pressure mounted on Moscow over its continuing occupation of parts of Georgia.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "extremely concerned" about the humanitarian situation in Georgia and called for a halt to lawlessness.

In the key Georgian town of Gori, west of the capital Tbilisi, correspondents saw signs of looting which locals blamed on militias from the neighboring province of South Ossetia, where the conflict erupted a week ago.

Russian armed forces have occupied parts of Georgia since repelling a Georgian attack last week on the tiny pro-Russian separatist territory of South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's control in the 1990s.

Shops had been smashed up in Gori and there were very few parked cars. "They were stealing cars and breaking into shops," Vasily, 72, said. "They spoke Ossetian."

The Russians have pledged to stop looting but men wearing an assortment of camouflaged uniforms stole cars from journalists and from the United Nations on Thursday and a hidden sniper shot at a female Georgian television correspondent, grazing her arm.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was behind a "deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing".

"I can prove it with the international organizations already bringing testimony to what I'm saying," he said in English at a briefing for foreign media.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the architect of a two-day old ceasefire, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would visit Tbilisi on Friday to secure Georgia's signature to a peace deal which would "consolidate" the halt to fighting.

"If tomorrow Mr Saakashvili signs the document that we have negotiated with (Russian President) Mr Medvedev, then the withdrawal of Russian troops can begin," Sarkozy said.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We can forget about talks on Georgia's territorial integrity because it's impossible to force South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree that they can be returned into Georgia's fold by force".

In a sharp warning, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington's relationship with Russia could be "adversely affected for years to come" unless the Kremlin rethought its "aggressive posture" in Georgia, a close U.S. ally.

"This is going to be a defining crisis in the United States-Russian relationship. The danger is that neither side feels it can back down," said Michael Cox, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

"We may only be at the beginning of this crisis rather than at the end of it."

UKRAINIAN CHALLENGE