KEY POINTS:
BRUSSELS - Georgia raised the stakes in its standoff with Russia yesterday when it compared Moscow's treatment of ethnic Georgians to Nazi German actions against Jews in the 1930s.
Russia has cut air, land, sea and postal links with Georgia, initially in response to the brief detention last month of four Russian servicemen on suspicion of espionage. Several hundred Georgians living in Russia have been deported as illegal immigrants.
The row has been fuelled by tensions over Georgia's drive to join Nato and the European Union.
Giorgi Baramidze, Georgian Secretary of State for Euro-Atlantic Integration, accused Russia of "pursuing a kind of ethnic cleansing policy, exercising xenophobic rhetoric. Their deeds very much look like Nazi Germany in the 1930s."
- REUTERS
