Mikheil Saakashvili

Reuters

08.10.08, 2:26 PM ET

RUSSIAN FEDERATION - (Recasts with U.S., Russian and Georgian envoys)

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The United States suggested on Sunday that Russia was interested in "regime change" in Georgia after Moscow rejected Tbilisi's offer of a cease-fire in the separatist region of South Ossetia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the president of Georgia "must go," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council.

Khalilzad then looked straight at Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin and asked if Moscow was looking for "regime change."

"Is the goal of the Russian Federation to change the leadership of Georgia?" he said.

Churkin did not directly address the question but said there are leaders who "become an obstacle."

"Sometimes those leaders need to contemplate how useful they have become to their people," Churkin told reporters later.

"Regime change is purely an American invention," he said. "We're all for democracy in Georgia."

In Moscow, Lavrov said the departure of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was not a must to solve the crisis but that Russia no longer saw him as a partner.