MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday that Moscow was not satisfied by U.S. explanations of the need for reconnaissance flights over neighboring Georgia.
Russia scrambled two fighter jets Saturday to track a U-2 spy plane that it said was flying near the Russian border. The Foreign Ministry delivered a statement of protest to the U.S. Embassy, accusing Washington of Cold War tactics.
``We have asked the U.S. to explain to us the need for such flights,'' the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying. ``The U.S. says such flights are necessitated by the fight against terrorism on Georgian territory. We cannot accept these explanations ... and will not accept them.''
A senior U.S. diplomat said Washington had informed Moscow in advance about plans to conduct reconnaissance flights over Georgia and Azerbaijan.
``Aerial reconnaissance is one way to try to track the movements of terrorist groups,'' the diplomat said on condition of anonymity, adding that such flights could benefit Russia in its fight against Chechen separatists, who Moscow claims are aided by international terrorist groups.
But Ivanov said it would be impossible to spot terrorists from the high-flying U-2, but it would have no problem spotting Russian military installations.
The senior U.S. diplomat said the flights were far from the Russian border. Russia says the spy plane flew 12 to 20 miles from its territory.
The diplomat said Washington had not decided whether it would take up Georgia's offer to allow U.S. forces to use its air bases in the war against Iraq.
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who has tried to ally his Caucasus Mountains nation with the United States as a counterweight to its huge neighbor, last week expressed strong support for the U.S.-British attack on Iraq.
The United States has identified the Pankisi Gorge, a rugged border region of Georgia next to Russia's breakaway Chechnya, as a possible haven for Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Georgia, which turned down Russian offers to rid the region of fighters, last year accepted Washington's help in forming its own anti-terrorist units to fight the militants.