RUSSIA stepped up its campaign to isolate Georgia yesterday despite the release of four military officers arrested for alleged espionage.

President Saakashvili turned the Russians over to the head of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in what he termed a gesture of goodwill to Georgia’s European allies.

Russia, infuriated by the arrests, showed no sign last night of reciprocating. The Transport and Communications Ministry announced that all road, sea, rail and air links to Georgia were being suspended from today. Postal services were also being halted.

Boris Gryzlov, the Speaker of the Duma, the Russian parliament, said that legislation would be introduced to enable the Government to ban banking operations with certain countries. Georgians working in Russia send an estimated $2 billion (£1.1 billion) a year to impoverished relatives at home.

Mr Saakashvili announced the release of the men after a meeting in Tbilisi with Karel De Gucht, the Belgian Foreign Minister, who is the OSCE chairman in office. In an afternoon of political theatre the Russians were taken in a convoy of police cars to the offices of the Georgian Prosecutor-General, where they were paraded outside in handcuffs before the media.

An official read each a statement affirming Georgia’s view that he was a spy, then banned him from the country for life. The men were transferred to Mr De Gucht’s care and driven off in OSCE vehicles. They were later flown to Moscow by Russian military transport, along with two other officers who had been sought by Georgian authorities in connection with the alleged spy ring.

Mr Saakashvili, at a press conference with Mr De Gucht, said that Georgia had agreed on Saturday to the OSCE’s offer to facilitate the transfer of the men to Moscow. He said that there was no doubt that the men were spies and insisted that their release had been “in no way” a response to pressure from Russia. The President dismissed the Russian sanctions, saying that Georgia had been subjected to persistent efforts by Moscow to undermine its independence since 1991, and particularly since he came to power in the Rose Revolution of 2003.

“The message of Georgia to our great neighbour Russia is: enough is enough. We want to have good relations, we want to be constructive, we want to have dialogue, but we can’t be treated as some second-rate backyard to some kind of re-emerging empire,” he said.

“We want to have a civilised relationship. We want, together with Russia, to be part not of a world where there is a culture of intimidation, blackmail, bullying and pressure, but a world of civilised dialogue.”

Mr De Gucht urged Russia to respond to the Georgian gesture with actions to “decrease tensions rapidly”. He said: “I think that isolation is not the answer to the situation. It’s very important that air traffic should be restored and land borders opened and normal transactions should again be possible between Russia and Georgia.”

Moscow responded to last week’s arrests by recalling its ambassador, evacuating scores of diplomats and their families and banning visas for Georgians. Troops at two Russian bases in Georgia, legacies of the Soviet era, were placed on high alert. President Putin accused Georgia on Sunday of “state terrorism involving hostage-taking” and compared its leadership to Josef Stalin’s notorious secret policeman Lavrenty Beria.

He warned President Bush in a telephone conversation yesterday of the risks of third countries encouraging Georgia to pursue “destructive policies”. Russia has been irritated by American support of Mr Saakashvili and particularly its encouragement of Georgia’s desire to join Nato.

A Kremlin statement said that Mr Putin “stressed that any action by third countries that the Georgian leadership could interpret as support for its destructive policy is unacceptable and constitutes a danger for peace and stability in the region”.

Mr De Gucht offered the backing of the OSCE for Mr Saakashvili’s campaign to replace Russian peacekeeping troops in Georgia’s two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia with an international police force. South Ossetia’s plan to hold an independence referendum next month would not be recognised by the OSCE and would impede efforts to reach a peace agreement.

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