Russia defies truce with Georgia

OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia — A Russian military convoy defied a cease-fire agreement Wednesday and rolled through a strategically important city in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which claimed fresh looting and bombing by the Russians and their allies.

President Bush said a massive U.S. aid package was on the way for tens of thousands uprooted in the conflict and demanded Russia "keep its word and act to end this crisis."

"The United States stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected," Bush said sternly in Washington.

One day after the Kremlin and its smaller neighbor agreed to a French-brokered cease-fire to end the dispute over two pro-Russian breakaway territories, the pact appeared fragile at best.

An Associated Press reporter saw dozens of Russian trucks and armored vehicles leaving the city of Gori, some 20 miles south of the separatist region of South Ossetia and home of a key highway that divides Georgia in two, and moving deeper into Georgia.

Soldiers waved at journalists, and one jokingly shouted, "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi." The convoy roared southeast, toward the Georgian capital, but then turned north and set up camp about an hour's drive away from it.

Georgian officials said the Russians had looted and bombed Gori before they left. Moscow denied the accusation, but it appeared to be on a technicality: A BBC reporter in Gori said Russian tanks were in the streets while their South Ossetian allies seized cars, looted homes and set houses on fire.

As confusion reigned on the first day of the cease-fire agreement, Bush called a Rose Garden speech to express concern that the Russians were already breaking it.

He said he was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first to France and then to Tbilisi to reinforce U.S. efforts to "rally the world in defense of a free Georgia."

For her part, Rice said: "This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed."

The president said a huge U.S. aid effort was under way, including American naval forces and C-17 military cargo planes, to get clothes, blankets, medicine and other supplies to refugees. The European Union agreed to consider deploying European peacekeeping monitors to the area.