US Troops Fulfil Georgian Leader's Long Plans

TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said Thursday his former Soviet state's decision to accept U.S. military training and hardware was part of a longstanding plan to strengthen its independence.
The comments were his first since Washington promised elite troops to train and equip Georgia's army. Russia has denounced the U.S. move as liable to aggravate an already volatile situation in the sensitive Transcaucasus region, which straddles export routes for oil from big new fields in the Caspian Sea.
The plan amounts to a diplomatic coup for Shevardnadze, who was Soviet foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s and has tried in the post-communist period to orient his country toward the West despite civil wars and ethnic conflict.