The United States and Russia on Thursday traded some of their sharpest words over the conflict in Georgia, including a suggestion by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that Washington provoked the fighting to sway the outcome of the US presidential race.

The Cold War-style barbs, hurled at long range from the two capitals and face to face at the United Nations, underscored the breakdown of diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s 3-week-old military intervention in the former Soviet republic.

Russia faced international isolation two days after it recognised the independence of a pair of breakaway Georgian regions at the centre of the conflict. It won no support for the move at meetings of the UN Security Council and an Asian alliance that comprises Russia, China and four Central Asian nations. But neither has the Security Council taken any action against Russia, holding six emergency sessions.

In an interview on Thursday with CNN, Putin suggested that the United States had encouraged Georgia’s offensive and that there perhaps had been an American presence in the combat.

At a news briefing, the deputy chief of Russia’s military general staff, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, showed off an enlarged colour photocopy of what he said was the passport of a US citizen, Michael Lee White, born in 1967. He said it had been found in a South Ossetian village among items belonging to Georgian forces. The US Embassy in Georgia said it had no information on the matter, the Associated Press reported.

Putin told CNN: “If that is confirmed, it’s very bad. It’s very dangerous.”

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