UN council hears of Russian advances into Georgia

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Georgia brought another last-ditch appeal Monday to the United Nations Security Council to stop Russia's advancing army, which UN officials confirmed has driven deep beyond Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The officials, B. Lynn Pascoe and Edmond Mulet, advised the council behind closed doors that non-peacekeeping Russian airborne troops were entering US-allied Georgia from Abkhazia, and were not meeting any resistance while taking control of Georgia's Senaki army base, council diplomats said. They also said that three airborne battalions had been added to the 2,500 troops that the peacekeeping force for the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States - an alliance of former Soviet republics - has on both sides of the cease-fire line between Abkhazia and Georgia, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity because it was a closed session. "A full military invasion of Georgia is going on," Georgian Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters after the end of the two-hour council meeting that it had requested. "Now I think Security Council has to act."