Russia starts pulling officials out of Georgia

TBILISI, Sep 29 (Reuters) Russia began pulling out some of its officials from Georgia today as the crisis mounted between the two former Soviet states over spying charges.

Tensions flared on Wednesday when Georgia arrested four Russian army officers, accused them of spying, and sent police to surround Russian army headquarters in the Georgian capital.

A Russian Ilyushin cargo plane landed in Tbilisi to pick up some of the several hundred Russian officials based in the southern Caucasus country and bring them home.

''At least more than 100 people will leave today,'' Russian ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko, himself recalled by Moscow, told journalists in the Georgian capital. He said a second plane was scheduled to arrive from Moscow.

The army headquarters controls two Russian bases, relics from Soviet times which are to be withdrawn in 2008. The bases, part of Moscow's frontline defences during the Cold War, has itself been a source of tension between the two states.

Georgia has formally charged the Russians with spying and expected them to appear in court for a preliminary hearing later on Friday, Shota Khizanishvili, head of administration at the Georgian Interior Ministry told Reuters.

A planned meeting between deputy foreign ministers of the two countries in Moscow was cancelled today at short notice, a Russian government source said. No reason was given.

Russian ministers and media have reacted angrily to what they have described as deliberate provocation from Georgia's pro-Western president Mikhail Saakashvili.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL Moscow has recalled its ambassador to Tbilisi, demanded the release of the four officers and advised Russian nationals against travel to Georgia, a small mountainous republic of five million people.

President Vladimir Putin has so far not commented publicly on the crisis. He remained in the Black Sea resort of Sochi today attending an economic forum.

Georgia has suffered serious economic hardship, aggravated by civil war, since independence from Moscow, with power cuts and shortages. Many Georgians work in Russia and send money home, keeping the country very much in the sway of its huge neighbour.

In New York, Russia urged the UN Security Council to put pressure on Tbilisi to withraw its troops from part of the breakaway Abkhazia region, which won effective independence from Georgia in a war in 1992-93.

Council members asked UN officials to brief them on the situation on Friday before taking up the statement.

Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have worsened in recent months. Saakashvili has irked Russia by pursuing NATO membership and Russian media have speculated that this is what lies at the heart of the dispute.

''There is no mistaking the fact that it is Georgia that has been consciously heading into conflict with Moscow,'' Russia's Kommersant daily said in a comment on Friday. It speculated that delays in Georgia winning NATO membership had prompted Tbilisi to spark the crisis.

''Georgia provokes Russia to use force to release its military'' headlined Izvestia daily on its front page, next to a picture of Saakashvili standing at a lectern wearing a rugby shirt in the red and white colours of Georgia.

REUTERS LL PM1401