Army trainers arrive in ex-Soviet republic to begin mission

TBILISI, Georgia -- A first contingent of 50 U.S. Army trainers landed in this former Soviet republic on Sunday to begin a two-year job of upgrading a tiny, poorly financed Georgian military.

The Pentagon says the training of 2,000 elite Georgian troops is part of a global counterterrorism effort that already has thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and nearby central and south Asia, hundreds deployed to a Muslim guerrilla area in the Philippines, and a U.S. advance team planning military training for the Arab nation of Yemen.

The C-17 U.S. military transport carrying the Georgia trainers, mostly Special Forces soldiers, touched down at Tbilisi's airport after a journey from Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. They joined two dozen other Americans who have been here for weeks planning the operation. The training corps at times will expand to 150, as specialists come and go on short terms of duty, said Lt. Col. Robert M. Waltemeyer, mission commander.

The program begins officially May 27 with a 70-day course of staff training for Georgian officers.

After a break, the Americans will begin four consecutive 100-day tactical training programs for four specialized Georgian army units -- special forces, commando, and mountain battalions, and a motorized rifle brigade. That will extend the program into 2004.

The Green Beret trainers include specialists in mountain fighting, urban combat and other skills. The $64 million program also will supply the Georgian military with some new small arms and ammunition, uniform items, and communications and other equipment.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze last Monday described the U.S. military presence in his nation of 5 million people, which emerged in 1991 from the breakup of the Soviet Union, as "a very important factor for strengthening and developing Georgian statehood." The 20,000-member Georgian military has suffered from a declining budget and inadequate training.

The Pentagon said last month the training would help the Georgian army "address the situation in the Pankisi Gorge," a lawless area of northeast Georgia where Washington says terrorists linked to al-Qaida may be sheltered among Muslim guerrillas and refugees from the separatist-minded Russian region of Chechnya, just across the border.

The Pentagon also said, however, that U.S. troops would not participate in any military operations in Georgia. Waltemeyer said last week he and his trainers had no plans to travel to and survey the rugged Pankisi area, just 20 miles by air from Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

Russian officials have complained that Shevardnadze's government, whose relations with Moscow are tense, encouraged the growth of a Chechen cross-border base in the Pankisi area in the 1990s.

There has been no official indication here that any Georgian military action is planned for the Pankisi Gorge, or for the breakaway region of Abkhazia, in Georgia's northwest, where negotiations between the Christian-dominated Georgian government and Muslim separatists are at an impasse.

Pro-Russian Georgians speculate the U.S.-Georgian partnership is not aimed at Muslim guerrillas in Pankisi, but at establishing a U.S. base on Russia's border and near Iraq. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has not objected to the U.S. mission here.