U.S. destroyer delivers aid to Georgia

mcclatchy newspapers

POTI, Georgia — A U.S. Navy destroyer delivered 55 tons of humanitarian aid for war-weary Georgia on Sunday as residents staged a second day of protests against Russian forces still occupying the country.

The U.S.S. McFaul, the first of at least three U.S. ships bringing relief supplies to ally Georgia, anchored one mile off the Black Sea coast of the southwestern city of Batumi, where crews used barges to ferry ashore bottled water, nonperishable food, blankets, diapers, cooking utensils and other items.

Stephen Guise, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, said the ship would have preferred to dock at Georgia’s deepwater port at Poti, but that the port had suffered too much damage during the war to accommodate the destroyer. Batumi’s port is too shallow to accommodate the McFaul.

Guise said that contractors and aid agencies working with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is overseeing the effort, would carry the supplies by road to war-affected areas in western Georgia. U.S. military planes have already delivered $13 million in aid to Tbilisi, which is closer to the heaviest fighting of the two-week conflict.

At least two other ships were en route to Georgia carrying relief goods, Guise said. A Coast Guard cutter also is due to arrive within days.

The arrival of the ships comes after Turkey, which by treaty controls access to the Black Sea, turned down a Bush administration request. Turkey, however, had already granted the McFaul permission to enter the Black Sea for a training mission.

Navy officials quickly loaded it with humanitarian supplies. On Friday, the Navy announced that the McFaul and the cutter Dallas had been dispatched from Italy.