Georgia sends tanks into gorge after Russian shelling

Georgian tanks rolled into the Pankisi Gorge yesterday in a move aimed at forestalling an increasingly impatient Russia from sending its own forces to clean out alleged terrorists in the remote and lawless territory.

Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian President, said he ordered 1,000 troops into the gorge as a demonstration of "the nation's strength", one day after the United States criticised Russia for adding to tensions by bombing the area. "The whole world supports us," Mr Shevardnadze said on Georgian television. "Today's operation in the Pankisi Gorge shows our strength."

About 7,000 refugees from Russia's 35-month war in Chechnya have taken refuge with their ethnic cousins, the Kists, who have lived for centuries in the tiny mountain redoubt. Mr Shevardnadze said the troops were sent in after residents had asked for protection from a threatened Russian attack. "Georgia is capable of guaranteeing order on its territory," the President said. "It is becoming a stable country."

Moscow says hundreds of armed Chechen rebels are sheltering among the refugees, and they could include Taliban and al-Qa'ida terrorist stragglers from Afghanistan. In recent weeks, Moscow has pressured Georgia to allow Russian forces to cross the border to deal with the alleged threat. Georgia says Russian warplanes have attacked targets in the area five times in two months, including an air raid on Friday that killed at least one and wounded five.

Moscow denies its planes have violated Georgian airspace. But on Saturday the White House spokesman Ari Fleisher read out an official rebuke, saying: "The United States is deeply concerned about credible reports that Russian military aircraft indiscriminately bombed villages in northern Georgia. We regret the loss of life and deplore the violation of Georgia's sovereignty."

Not since the 11 September attacks had Washington publicly criticised Moscow's anti-terrorist campaign on its southern fringes.

In May, 200 American Green Beret military instructors were sent to Tbilisi to prepare a special anti-terrorist unit of the Georgian army, partly in response to Russian claims that dangerous Islamic terrorists were holed up in Pankisi. Since the USSR's collapse a decade ago Georgia has been mired in civil strife and economic decline. Russia has backed successful separatist movements in the Georgian ethnic republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, apparently hoping a divided and chaotic Georgia will be forced to remain within Moscow's orbit.

But since 11 September Georgia has utilised the new global anti-terrorist campaign to strengthen relations with America, inviting special troops to advise its security forces and talking of applying for membership of Nato.

Using the same anti-terrorist rhetoric, Moscow has been demanding for months that Georgian security forces join a Russian-led attack on Chechen fighters in Pankisi. In the face of Georgian refusal, Russian military officials have been talking increasingly of a unilateral strike.

Mr Shevardnadze said Georgia's US-trained anti-terrorist force of 1,500 men was holding exercises near Pankisi and could be sent in to back up the interior troops already there.

But a Russian military official said the troop deployment was window dressing, and that Mr Shevardnadze had never kept to pledges to clean up the gorge.