Russia clashes with ally and NATO aspirant Georgia strained further Moscow's ties with Washington, leading U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to warn U.S. relationship with Russia could be "adversely affected for years to come" unless the Kremlin rethought its "aggressive posture" in Georgia.
President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi, near Georgia's border, to urge Russia to embrace diplomacy in its showdown with its small neighbour to avoid a serious rift with the West.
The flurry of diplomatic activity aimed to restore peace in the Caucasus -- a key route for exporting Caspian oil to the West -- takes place as Moscow is under mounting international pressure to end its occupation of chunks of Georgian land.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said he would need to "take a closer look" at the peace proposal before signing it.
"We have to see what she (Rice) has to bring," he told CNN late on Thursday.
Russian troops have occupied parts of Georgia since repelling a Georgian attack last week on the tiny separatist territory of South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's rule in the 1990s.
Russian soldiers and armour were seen on Thursday moving in or around the key Georgian town of Gori, west of Tbilisi. There were numerous signs of looting, which locals blamed on North Ossetian militias.
Witnesses said Russian tanks had rolled through the Black Sea port of Poti on Thursday morning, accompanying trucks with troops to the port area. A large column of Russian troops was seen in the western town of Zugdidi, not far from the second pro-Moscow separatist region of Abkhazia.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday he was "extremely concerned" about the humanitarian situation in Georgia and called for a halt to lawlessness.
Saakashvili said Russia was behind a "deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing".
Earlier this week Georgia asked the United Nations' highest court, the International Court of Justice, to issue an urgent order to Russia to halt what it describes as human rights violations on ethnic Georgians.
TROOPS PULL-OUT, INTEGRITY
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the architect of a three-day old ceasefire, said Saakashvili's signature to the six-point peace deal would "consolidate" the halt to fighting and lead to the withdrawal of Russian troops.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We can forget about talks on Georgia's territorial integrity because it's impossible to force South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree that they can be returned into Georgia's fold by force".
Mentioning Georgia's territorial integrity in any document settling the conflict would be seen by people as "the deepest insult", he added in a radio interview.
Russia has said the case of Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia whose self-proclaimed independence was promptly recognised by major Western powers, creates a legal precedent for Georgia's separatist South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"Georgia is a member of the United Nations, as such it has internationally recognized borders, therefore the territorial integrity of Georgia within those borders is not an issue," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in comments to Lavrov's remarks.
"Georgia's borders have been reaffirmed by numerous Security Council resolutions," she said. "So the question of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be the subject of international negotiations as they have been at the U.N. Security Council," Perino said.
"The resolution of Kosovo's status is covered by a U.N. Security Council resolution and that resolution envisions an international process," she said. "So the two cases are totally different."
In a move likely to sour further Russia's ties with the U.S., Poland finally agreed on Thursday to host elements of U.S. global anti-missile system on its land after Washington improved the terms of the deal amid the Georgia crisis.
Russia views the planned U.S. anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe as a threat to its national security.
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