Georgia leader ramps up rhetoric in verbal war with Russia

By Maria Golovnina

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has resorted to increasingly fiery language as his conflict with Russia unfolded, comparing Moscow to Nazi Germany and accusing Russian soldiers of looting toilet seats.

Saakashvili, a media darling whose passionate pro-Western speeches have irritated Russia, has looked strained and edgy as since the conflict flared on August 7. His language has likewise become increasingly thunderous.

Speaking on CBS on Wednesday, he said Russian troops were rampaging through his country setting up concentration camps.

"Russian tanks are ... throwing people out of the houses, pushing people into concentration camps.". Russian forces, he said, were moving towards the capital Tbilisi.

"These are regular Russian troops, they go into houses, they destroy houses, there is all this documentary footage around that can prove it ... They are taking things like furniture, toilet seats, killing people, terrorizing people."

He has attacked the West for being soft on Russia, drawing parallels with Europe's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany.

"It (Western reaction) has not been adequate. They're talking about a negotiated ceasefire, how this side should do this, this side should do that - it's appeasement," he told a conference call. "Appeasement in 1938 brought tens of millions of deaths to Europe."

Russia denied making any move on the capital and said its troops were not involved in any looting.

As the war of words raged, Russia used its own public relations weapons to slam Georgia, accusing Saakashvili of "genocide" and seeking "bloody adventures".

Russian media have portrayed him in sharply negative light, calling him "aggressor" and other names usually reserved to describe Adolf Hitler in Russian history textbooks.

Visibly irritated in an interview with CNN, Saakashvili lashed out at the suggestion that Georgia started the conflict. "I'm sickened, sickened of this cynical and absolutely unfounded allegation," he said.

He stepped up the rhetoric further at a briefing in Tbilisi on Wednesday, saying: "What we are seeing is classical Balkan type and World War Two type of ethnic cleansing."

Pro-Moscow rebel leaders in South Ossetia and Abkhazia have not been modest with their expressions either.

"That is called schizophrenia and what can you say to a schizophrenic?" said Abkhaz foreign minister Sergei Shamba, referring to Saakashvili. "There is a different question of who there is to talk to, when it's clear that he is a sick man."

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