MOSCOW - Russia's parliament voted overwhelmingly Friday for reprisals against Georgia and Georgians if Tbilisi acts against two leftover Soviet-era bases on its territory.
The State Duma, parliament's lower house, called on President Vladimir Putin to take a series of measures, including recalling Moscow's ambassador, expelling Georgians found illegally in Russia and requiring Tbilisi to pay the market price for Russian oil.
In case "the situation around the bases worsens through Georgia's fault", Russia has the right to apply harsher measures to "protect the life and health of its citizens," the Duma's resolution added.
The motion was approved by 412 to none with one abstention, after the Georgian parliament unanimously passed a resolution on March 10 demanding that the Georgian government declare the Russian bases "illegal" if they are not evacuated by the end of this year.
The Georgian parliamentary resolution also gave the government until Sunday to draw up a list of unilateral measures, such as a halt in issuing visas to Russian military personnel, to go into effect if the two sides had not agreed on a withdrawal schedule by May 1, which apparently they have not.
"The Russian side must understand that we are demanding that the executive branch apply this resolution fully," Georgian parliamentary speaker Nino Burdzhanadze said Thursday. "I would like to believe that the Russian side will come back with some concrete proposals, although there is no real chance of that before" Sunday.
Burdzhanadze's Russian counterpart Boris Gryzlov said Friday, "Members of parliament are indignant at the irresponsible statements of Georgian officials. We don't want Georgia to become an unfriendly state."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Duma Thursday following Burdzhanadze's warning: "We will not give in to blackmail."
"Negotiations will continue as long as necessary," he added. "If steps are taken that constitute a threat to our bases, a threat to the lives of our soldiers and to our weaponry, I can assure you that we will not remain sitting down with our arms crossed."
The continued Russian military presence on Georgian soil 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to which Georgia once belonged, has become a major point of dispute not just between the two countries but also between Russia and the West.
During a visit to Georgia on Tuesday, the first by a serving US president, George W. Bush said he had discussed the dispute with Putin and stated that "all nations" must respect the territorial integrity of the small Caucasus country.
That was seen less as a reference to the bases dispute than to the Georgian government's struggle to reassert control over two separatist regions on its territory, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which have close ties to -- and tacit backing from -- Russia.
At a 1999 summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Istanbul, Russia pledged to quit two of four Soviet-era military bases in Georgia immediately -- which it did -- and would negotiate its pullout from the other two.
The two bases are located near Georgia's southwestern port of Batumi on the Black Sea and near the southern town of Akhalkalaki.
Last month Lavrov met Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili in Moscow and said afterwards that Russian troops could start leaving the bases later this year.
He said a draft acoord that reportedly includes a plan to transform the bases into joint Georgian-Russian facilities for "anti-terrorism" operations only awaited approval by Putin and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
But on May 6, Zurabishvili announced that Saakashvili was not satisfied with the draft accord and had as a result decided to boycott lavish ceremonies in Moscow three days later commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
05/13/2005 14:58 GMT