As the 15-member council scrambled Saturday to craft a revised draft resolution to formalize the French-brokered ceasefire between Moscow and Tbilisi, a Western diplomat said any final text will have to be acceptable to the Russians.

He played down calls from some quarters in Washington and Europe to punish Moscow for what NATO has condemned as an "excessive, disproportionate use of force" against Western-backed Georgia.

Russia ordered a five-day onslaught across its small neighbor after Tbilisi launched a military offensive on August 7 to wrest control of its renegade South Ossetia enclave from Moscow-backed separatists.

Moscow now insists that South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another Russian-backed rebel region, are unlikely to rejoin Georgia after the latest violence, a stance expected to complicate future UN talks on the status of the two disputed territories.

Russia's military offensive and resulting harsh rhetorical exchanges here between the US and Russian ambassadors have stoked fears of a possible return to the Cold War.

"It's all very well to say we are going to punish the Russians, but the reality is that we need them (to help settle major world issues)," the diplomat said Friday.

Asked what impact the Georgia conflict might have on talks by six major powers, including Russia, next month to agree a new round of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance, he replied: "Many reasonable people hope there will be no impact or that it will be limited."

"How the Russians comport themselves next month remains to be seen," said David Philipps, a Georgia expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank.

"If they have an interest in seeing that Iran does not become a nuclear weapons power and dealing with nuclear proliferation issues, I expect them to act in their national interest, which in this case overlaps with the United States," he told AFP.

"If (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin is so petulant and petty as to undermine the UN in its work on Iran, out of spite for the United States, then there's a slap across the backside," Philipps said.

Moscow's new hardline stance is also linked to its anger at Western support for Kosovo's unilateral secession from Serbia in February.

Russia, a close ally of Serbia and a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, had repeatedly warned here that Kosovo's independence would have consequences in other disputed lands.

Moscow's new assertiveness also stems from its anxiety over NATO's expansion in former Soviet republics and satellites.

"We have never made any secret of the fact that we think that NATO enlargement is wrong, and that with every new wave of enlargement, new security issues are created, and there are better ways to deal with matters of regional, European, Euro-Atlantic security," Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Thursday.

After Warsaw and Washington announced a preliminary deal on basing a controversial US missile shield in Poland to protect against a perceived Iranian missile threat, a senior Russian general warned Friday that the Poles were making themselves a target for Russia's military.

"Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike - 100 percent," General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces' deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

He explained that Russian military doctrine sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them."

Washington aims to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland plus a radar facility in the Czech Republic by 2011-2013 to complete a system already in place in the United States, Greenland and Britain.

Philipps denounced Nogovitsyn's comments as "irresponsible and reckless."

Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon official and now an international security expert at the Atlantic Council, dismissed them as "bluster, something you hear often from Russian military leaders."

He said it was a sign of Moscow's frustration over the involvement of Poland and the Czech Republic in the Western missile shield program.

"It shows there's still a lot more work the new US administration will have to do with Russia to make them a partner and take away this paranoia that it (the shield) is somehow aimed at them," Townsend said.

And he warned that "a Russian test of the next US administration is a lot more likely than might have been in the past."

related report
West must understand Russian fears: former British military chief
The West should make more effort to understand Moscow's concerns in responding to Russia's actions in Georgia, a former head of the British armed forces said Sunday.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is concerned about states surrounding Russia joining NATO and the European Union, General Sir Mike Jackson wrote in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

"The 'Near Abroad' -- the countries bordering Russia -- are strategically vital to its security," said Jackson, who commanded the NATO-led KFOR troops in Kosovo and the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

"Rightly or wrongly, Russia sees this as a zero-sum game: Putin has criticised Western leaders for being still locked into a Cold War mentality, but the reverse also seems to be true -- at least in part."

In Kosovo, "NATO relied for its justification on the emerging doctrine in international law that the prevention of humanitarian disaster -- of ethnic cleansing -- being perpetrated by a government on its own people can be more important than sovereignty itself.

"Whether we like it or not, this is precisely the justification advanced by Moscow for its intervention in Georgia," said Jackson, who headed Britain's armed forces from 2003 to 2006.

The problems arising from minority enclaves in Georgia, such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia are fundamentally political, rather than purely military, he wrote.

"Putin is determined to rebuild Russia's stature, and he is being much helped in this by the surge in energy prices.

"There is also evidence that after a decade and more of decline, the Russian armed forces are starting to rebuild and modernise.

"For me, the right course for the West -- without compromising its own position and values -- is to show a greater understanding of why Russia behaves as it does, to accept more willingly Russia's concerns for its Near Abroad.

"While there are actions that we cannot condone, Russian perceptions exist and will take time to change.

"This is the challenge for politicians and diplomats: strategic military hostility and confrontation must remain a thing of the past."

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