Russia’s Putin accuses U.S. of orchestrating conflict

Russia’s Asian allies oppose Moscow’s plan to redraw Georgia’s borders.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of pushing Georgia toward war and said he suspects a connection to the U.S. presidential campaign — a contention the White House dismissed as “patently false.”

In another sign of unraveling Russia-U.S. ties, Putin said that 19 U.S. poultry producers will be barred from exporting their products to Russia.

Putin, the former president and architect of an assertive foreign policy that stoked East-West tension even before Russia’s war with the U.S.-allied ex-Soviet republic, suggested in an interview with CNN that there was an American presence amid the combat with a potential domestic U.S. political motive.

“We have serious grounds to think that there were U.S. citizens right in the combat zone,” he said the interview broadcast on state-run Russian television. “And if that’s so, if that is confirmed, it’s very bad. It’s very dangerous.”

Putin’s acid attack on the United States came as Moscow’s bid to redraw Georgia’s borders hit an obstacle among its Asian allies. France, meanwhile, said the European Union is considering sanctions against Russia for its conduct in the Caucasus.

The Russian leader said the poultry decision was unrelated to the Georgia issue. He said that the unnamed American producers ignored demands that they correct alleged deficiencies after examinations by Russian inspectors last year.

“We try and keep our industry out of politics and into marketing opportunities, but sometimes it’s very difficult to separate the two,” said Jim Sumner, president of the U.S.A. Poultry Egg Export Council. He said Russia is a major market for American producers.

Putin said that Russia had hoped the U.S. would to restrain Georgia, which Moscow accuses of starting the war by attacking South Ossetia on Aug. 7. Instead, he suggested the U.S. encouraged the nation’s leadership to try to rein in the separatist region by force.

“The American side in fact armed and trained the Georgian army,” Putin said. “Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in interethnic conflicts? It’s easier to arm one side and push it into the murder of the other side, and it’s over.

“It seems like an easy solution. In reality it turns out that it’s not always so,” he said.

The United States has close ties with the Georgian government and has trained Georgian units, including for service in Iraq. But Russian officials have made statements aimed to convey the idea that Americans may have directly supported Georgia’s offensive.

At a briefing Tuesday, the deputy chief of Russian military general staff, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, showed off a color copy of what he said was a U.S. passport found in a basement in a village in South Ossetia among items that belonged to Georgian forces.

“We found a passport for Michael Lee White,” Nogovitsyn said. “He’s a Texan.”

The U.S. Embassy in Georgia said it had no information on the matter.

Putin appeared to link claims of an American presence amid the combat with a potential domestic U.S. political motive.

“If my guesses are confirmed, then that raises the suspicion that somebody in the United States purposefully created this conflict with the aim of aggravating the situation and creating an advantage ... for one of the candidates in the battle for the post of U.S. president.” Putin did not name a party or candidate.

White House press secretary Dana Perino called Putin’s contentions “patently false.” “To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational.”