Rice Travels Abroad to Amend Cease-Fire Agreement

Aug. 14, 2008 — -- When President Bush announced Wednesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to France and the Republic of Georgia, he described her trip in almost humanitarian terms.

"She will personally convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government. On this trip she will continue our efforts to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia," the president said, making no mention of a U.S. role in mediating the conflict between Georgia and Russia.

During her mad dash around the world today and Friday, however, Rice will be pushing hard to amend a peace deal brokered just days earlier, according to senior officials at the State Department who would not be named because they were describing internal deliberations.

In the days before Rice's departure, the administration left negotiations for a cease-fire up to the Europeans, and officials said the United States stood firmly behind efforts by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to secure an agreement.

Even today in public, Rice and her spokesman supported Sarkozy's efforts. The heated rhetoric out of Washington, however, most recently today from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, illustrates the seriousness with which the United States views the Russian threat.

"Mr. [Vladimir] Putin -- is interested in reasserting Russia's -- not only Russia's great power or superpower status, but in reasserting Russia's traditional spheres of influence," Gates said, referring to the Russian prime minister.

The cease-fire agreement, as described by several U.S. officials, contains two major holes the administration finds disconcerting.

Specifically, the United States wants to see the text refer to respect for Georgia's "territorial integrity," an oft-repeated phrase that was noticeably absent from the agreement, according to officials.

Second, the United States is particularly concerned about the fifth point in the six-point agreement, added at the urging of the Russians, which allows in vague terms for Russian troops to act in a peacekeeping role even outside of South Ossetia. The clause might explain continued Russian troops movements today.

Point five allows for those actions until an international peacekeeping force replaces them, but that may take some time, perhaps even months, to implement.

Rice is not traveling with a new document in hand, but rather with ideas of how to fix the gaps that exist in the current one, the officials said.

The United States may try to punish Russia, or at least hold punitive measures over Moscow's head in order to push a deal through.

The Russians succeeded in adding the contentious points by bargaining from a strong position, and the United States is trying to take back the high ground. Namely, the United States is threatening to block Russia's accession into the World Trade Organization, something it has coveted for years with American backing.

Similarly, the United States may try to block future meetings of the NATO-Russia council. Just this week the United States boycotted such a meeting, and Russia refused to attend without the United States at the table. "There are a lot of signals being sent," said one senior American official.

Russia's membership in the G8 may also be in jeopardy, but officials note that this option may not be actively pursued.

For now, Rice is focused on resolving the conflict diplomatically. After returning to Washington on Sunday from Crawford, Texas, where she'll brief President Bush, Rice is expected to leave shortly for NATO meetings in Brussels.

The crisis in Georgia is very much on Rice's front burner, and officials note that the attention she is devoting to it might even jeopardize her plans to attend the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing in 10 days.