Russia faced diplomatic isolation over its military action against Georgia on Thursday, with its Asian allies failing to offer support and France saying EU leaders were considering imposing sanctions. Moscow accused the West of heightening tension by a naval build-up in the Black Sea, and said talk of punishing Russia for recognizing the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions was the product of a “sick” and “confused” imagination. The Group of Seven rich nations condemned Moscow's “continued occupation of Georgia” and a group of Asian allies led by China, meeting at a regional summit, failed to follow Russia's lead on independence for two breakaway regions of Georgia. Belarus, Russia's closest ex-Soviet ally, gave the clearest support, with President Alexander Lukashenko saying the Kremlin “had no other moral choice but to” recognize the Georgian regions. But he too stopped short of recognizing them himself. The crisis flared early this month when Georgia tried to retake by force its separatist province of South Ossetia and Russia launched an overwhelming counter-attack. Russian forces swept the Georgian army out of the rebel region and are still occupying some areas of Georgia proper. On Tuesday Moscow announced that it was recognizing South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states. France, the current European Union president, has called a meeting of EU heads of government on Monday to discuss the Georgian crisis. “Sanctions are being considered and many other means as well,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in response to a question at a news conference. “We are trying to elaborate a strong text that will show our determination not to accept (what is happening in Georgia),” he said. “Of course, there are also sanctions.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed such talk, noting that Kouchner had also suggested recently that Russia might soon attack Moldova, Ukraine and the Crimea. “But that is a sick imagination, and probably that applies to sanctions as well. I think it is a demonstration of complete confusion,” Lavrov told reporters in Tajikistan. Meanwhile, Russia successfully tested a long-range Topol missile designed to avoid detection by anti-missile defense systems from its Plesetsk launch site, a Russian military spokesman said on Thursday. “The launch was specially tasked to test the missile's capability to avoid ground-based detection systems,” said Colonel Alexander Vovk of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. Washington and Warsaw formally signed a deal last week to station elements of a US missile defense shield in Poland, a move that has aggravated Russian-Western tensions already raw from Moscow's intervention in Georgia. Russia has heaped scorn on the missile defense system, which the US says is aimed at Iran, and through its Foreign Ministry last week vowed “to react, and not only through diplomatic protests.”
