Russia delays UN stand on Georgian missile case

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 (Reuters) The United States called for a UN Security Council meeting on last week's dropping of a missile on Georgian territory but Russia, blamed by Tbilisi, delayed immediate action at a council meeting today.

''The United States deplores this attack,'' US envoy Jackie Sanders told reporters after the council was briefed by senior UN peacekeeping official Hedi Annabi on the August 6 incident in which a missile hit a field without exploding.

''We support the idea of a formal session of the Security Council, supporting Georgia's request for that. ... We will be pushing to have that as soon as possible.'' Georgia has charged that a Russian plane dropped the missile in what it called an ''act of aggression.'' Moscow has denied involvement in an incident, which has reignited feuding between Russia and its pro-Western neighbor.

Experts from the United States, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania said yesterday after an investigation that a plane from Russia was responsible. Russian officials now in Georgia to conduct their own probe dismissed that finding today.

''Some colleagues were proposing some kind of a reaction of the Security Council to that incident,'' Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told journalists. ''We explained to the council that it would be premature for the council to take any kind of a stand on this matter.'' Churkin said the experts' findings issued on Wednesday had ''even more confused the whole thing'' and a ''serious discussion'' the Russian team would have with its Georgian counterparts was needed to clarify the situation.

The Georgian missile incident has come as another point of contention in the Security Council between Russia and the United States, which are already far apart over Kosovo and have struggled to overcome disagreements this year on Iran and Sudan.

Council president Pascal Gayama of Congo Republic said council members wanted to keep following the Georgian situation and hoped that ''at an appropriate stage'' they would get a full report on the various investigations.

But he said the council was not yet ready to issue a statement on the incident something the United States had wanted. ''We thought it was important to have a statement. Some others, particularly Russia, were not prepared today to have a formal statement,'' Sanders said.

''One thing we don't want to see is this dragged out, as some might want,'' she said. ''We think it's important that Georgia has a chance to get into the Security Council chamber and address the issue.'' Reuters SZ VP0205