Edward Shevardnadze, Georgia's president, saw Russia's hand behind a small military rebellion in western Georgia, which disrupted construction of the pipeline last October.
Many people in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, see Moscow's hand behind the attempted assassination of President Edward Shevardnadze in February and an army mutiny in western Georgia this week.
IAEA-led team was fanning out in western Georgia in search of the remaining two of a batch of eight abandoned devices containing strontium-90, another radioactive element, which had been used in generators for communication stations.
Over the last decade the fervently pro-Western government of Georgia's US-educated President Mikheil Saakashvili has been desperate to shake off the country's Soviet past.
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But the new pro-Western government of Georgia embraced the strategic pipeline.
In May George Bush visited Tbilisi to give public support to Mikhail Saakashvili, the pro-western president of Georgia, who is trying to close down Russian military bases on his soil Russia says it will leave by 2008 and regain control over Russian-backed separatist enclaves.
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The US and a number of Western governments have backed Georgia, sending aid and issuing strongly-worded statements.
Many of Georgia's Western friends would be delighted if someone with an easier personality (and greater readiness to listen to advice) were in charge.
It suspects Western governments of having orchestrated Georgia's "Rose Revolution" in 2003 and Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" in 2004, which brought pro-Western governments to power in those countries.
While Mrs Clinton reiterated that the US did not believe in spheres of influence, she was clearly trying to strike a balance between keeping pro-Western forces in Ukraine and Georgia happy and not upsetting Moscow.
The pro-Western Saakashvili came to power in Georgia's "Rose Revolution" in 2003 and was elected president in 2004 and 2008.
Even if Ivanishvili is a Manchurian candidate personally dispatched by Putin, dear Bidzina will have to keep Georgia moving in a Western direction unless he wants to have a very short political career.
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The difficulty for Western observers is that the situation in Georgia is indeed complicated.
After pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili took power in Georgia in 2003, he vowed to reunite Abkhazia with Georgia.
Georgia, a pro-Western ally of the United States, is intent on asserting its authority over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both of which have strong Russian-backed separatist movements.
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In a hint that the conflict could widen, Azerbaijan and Georgia, two pro-western ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus, have been warned against offering a haven to a Chechen government-in-exile or to retreating Chechen forces.
Rice said NATO ministers are expected to discuss what the alliance can do to support Georgia and "deny Russia's strategic objectives, " which she said included undermining the government of Georgia's pro-Western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili.
And although the latest conflict was triggered by Georgia, the deeper roots of Russia's invasion lie in domestic events that go back as far as 2003-04: the destruction of the Yukos oil company, and Russia's perception of the colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine as a Western plot to undermine its sovereignty.
Georgia's impressive crop of western-educated young reformers believes he is now strong enough to back them instead.
But to Georgia's backers at least, Western support looks pretty limp.
Similarly, a huge increase in defence spending and a lot of well-directed western military aid does not on its own make Georgia a prime candidate to join NATO, desirable though that might be for other reasons.
But in the Senate and on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama said he wanted to let Ukraine and Georgia make their free choice to join the Western camp, starting with a roadmap for NATO membership.
Ultimately, it all comes down to political will in Western Europe and the longer Russian tanks remain in Georgia, the clearer it becomes that such will is lacking.
The Kremlin has given them reasons to worry: the Russian-inspired cyber-attacks on Estonia in 2007, Russia's war with Georgia in 2008 and the large military exercises in western Russia in 2009 that culminated in a mock nuclear strike on Warsaw.
Georgia only survived with gutsy self-defense that gave agile Western diplomacy time to succeed.
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The advantage of Georgia is that it is seen as the most pro-Western and business-friendly country in the region.
During the debate on the EU's foreign policy she pointed to the work of the union in brokering a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia in South Ossetia, and the process of peacekeeping in the Western Balkans.
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That is why Western leaders must make quite clear their outrage over the invasion and continued bombing of Georgia.
One is Georgia, which is now (the Baltics aside) the only showcase for Western-style economic and political development in the former Soviet Union.
The brutal treatment of prisoners has become a symbol for the perceived failures of Georgia's previous leaders: they started out nine years ago as idealistic pro-Western reformers, intent on clamping down on post-Soviet organised crime.
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