'Russia aiming to take over Georgia'

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia intends to take over his country to secure energy supply routes from central Asia and to begin ridding the region of democracies.

"They want the whole of Georgia," Mr Saakashvili said in an interview yesterday with Germany's Rhein-Zeitung newspaper.

"The Russians need control over energy routes from central Asia and the Caspian Sea," he said in the interview.

"In addition, they want to get rid of us, they want regime change," he added. "Every democratic movement in this neighbouring region must be got rid of."

Mr Saakashvili said he had spoken to US President George W. Bush who had signalled his "full support".

"He understands that it's not really about Georgia but in a certain sense it's also an aggression against America," he told the paper.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Georgia should unconditionally withdraw its forces from the conflict zone in its breakaway region of South Ossetia, Russian news agencies said. They quoted Mr Medvedev as telling French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a telephone conversation that Tbilisi should also immediately sign a formal pledge not to attack South Ossetia.

Georgia said earlier yesterday it had halted military activity in the conflict zone and was looking for talks on a formal ceasefire agreement.

Meanwhile Tbilisi international airport was hit in a Russian air strike yesterday, hours before the scheduled arrival of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. The airport was hit 200 metres from the runway.

In the same air raid, Russian jets bombed a nearby military airport and construction plant. The US suggested yesterday that Russia was interested in "regime change" in Georgia after Moscow rejected Tbilisi's offer of a cease-fire in the separatist region of South Ossetia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the President of Georgia "must go," the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council. Mr Khalilzad then looked straight at Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin and asked if Moscow was looking for "regime change". Mr Churkin did not directly address the question but said there are leaders who "become an obstacle."

"Sometimes those leaders need to contemplate how useful they have become to their people," Mr Churkin told reporters later.