Russians wary of new activity in the Black Sea

Accuse US ships of delivering arms, not aid

A sailor manned his post on the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas as it arrived in Georgia's port of Batumi yesterday in the Black Sea. Georgians waved their nation's flag to welcome the vessel. (Sergei Grits/ Associated Press)

MOSCOW - Russian commanders said yesterday they were growing alarmed at the number of NATO warships sailing into the Black Sea, conceding that NATO vessels now outnumbered 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 A. 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," the 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 US Embassy in Tbilisi said yesterday a Coast Guard cutter, the Dallas, would attempt to dock there, 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 Associated Press reported.

During the conflict with Georgia, Russian forces occupied the port and sank Georgian ships in the harbor. 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, that they limit to three weeks the time noncoastal countries can sail military vessels on the sea.

Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy head of the Russian general staff, said at a briefing in Moscow that under the agreement, Turkey, which controls the straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles, must be notified 15 days in advance before military ships sail into the sea, and that warships cannot remain longer than 21 days.

"The convention stipulates a limited number of vessels," he said. "That is, the same state cannot deploy a certain group without any limit."

He said any sustained NATO deployment would require rotating ships through the straits.

It was unclear yesterday how many NATO ships were currently in the Black Sea.

A spokesman at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, in Mons, Belgium, said there were four NATO warships there on a previously scheduled exercise called Active Endeavor, for training in anti-terrorist and anti-pirate maneuvers. But he cautioned that other NATO countries could have ships in the sea not operating under NATO command.

"Obviously, there are other NATO-affiliated nations out doing things," said Lieutenant Colonel Web Wright, the spokesman. "But I can't speak for those nations."

The US guided missile destroyer McFaul, for example, docked over the weekend in Batumi to deliver humanitarian aid.

A report on the Russian news agency Interfax cited this ship, along with three others, as operating in the sea though it was unclear whether it referred to vessels taking part in the previously scheduled exercise.