Russia stoking tension by Abkhazia troop boost: NATO

By David Brunnstrom and Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO accused Moscow on Wednesday of stoking tensions by announcing a troop build-up in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region which risked undermining stability in the country.

Member states' envoys to NATO met Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's permanent representative to the alliance, NATO for what was "a clear and sometimes sharp exchange of views, but absolutely no meeting of the minds", a NATO spokesman said.

The ambassadors of the U.S.-led alliance expressed "clearly and unanimously" their concern about Russian moves to establish legal links to Abkhazia and a second separatist region, South Ossetia, saying it undermined Georgian sovereignty.

They also called for an international probe of the shooting down of a Georgian drone last weekend and said Russia's announcement on Tuesday that it would send more troops to Abkhazia without Georgian permission "risks undermining stability in that country", the spokesman said.

Russia said it was sending the extra peacekeeping troops to counter what it called Georgian plans for an attack, prompting the European Union to accuse it of stoking tensions.

The NATO spokesman, James Appathurai, said Moscow might be technically entitled to raise its troop levels, but "in the political reality, this is not easing tensions, it is raising tensions."

According to the mandate for Abkhazia peacekeeping, plans for deployments had to be approved by the conflicting sides, "and the Georgian side has made clear it would not approve".

"CONCERN"