U.S. worries Russia-Georgia dispute may get violent

Thu May 8, 6:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States fears there could be bloodshed in the dispute between Russia and ex-Soviet Georgia, a State Department official said on Thursday, as he urged Moscow to stop intimidating its southern neighbor.

Acting Undersecretary of State Dan Fried said he does not believe the Russians want to go to war over Georgia's breakaway regions, and is sure that the Caucasus nation does not either.

"But what we fear is that with so much tension, so many armed people in close proximity, and a record of provocations, that there could be a spark setting off a wider problem, and suddenly you're dealing with deaths and shooting and an out-of-control incident," he told a hearing of Helsinki Commission on Capitol Hill.

"We worry about that a great deal," Fried said.

He echoed warnings from the White House a day earlier to Moscow to back down from increasingly provocative actions supporting the separatists in Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian authorities say war has only been narrowly averted in recent days.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia threw off Tbilisi's control in the early 1990s. Georgia wants to bring them back under its influence and resents the support and help Russia has offered them for years.

Recently the Abkhazia dispute has flared as Moscow sent more troops to the region and Abkhazian authorities reported shooting down several Georgian "spy" drones. On Thursday they said they had shot down another one. Georgia denies this had happened.

"Provocations on all sides must stop," Fried said. "Russia needs to help put the Abkhazia dispute on a negotiating track, not use it to intimidate its smaller neighbor."

The Abkhazians say the Georgian spy drones prove Tbilisi is planning an attack, while the Georgians say the rebels and Russia are trying to stir tensions.

Fried said the United States had urged Georgia as well as Russia to exercise restraint, "but there is a difference between a very small vulnerable country and a very large country."

Georgia was the vulnerable party "and it is their territory that is under threat," he said.

Western states suspect Russia of trying to punish Georgia for its bid to join NATO -- an effort supported by the United States at a NATO summit in Bucharest last month.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)