MOSCOW, Feb 21: Russia on Thursday slapped down mounting talk of a US role in helping Georgia oust suspected Al-Qaeda fighters from a gorge near Russia’s rebel Chechnya region.

General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of Russia’s military staff, told Interfax news agency on Thursday “Russia and Georgia should destroy this terrorist centre in the Pankisi Gorge together”.

He said he saw no US role. “I don’t see any need for that at this stage,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

A senior US official said on Wednesday Washington was looking to help Georgia rein in the Pankisi gorge, where Islamic militants linked to Chechen rebels are thought to have bases.

The official ruled out seeking Russian help to crush followers of Osama bin Laden thought to be holed up in the area.

Since Russian troops returned to Chechnya in 1999, the gorge has become the focus of kidnapping and drug-running rackets.

The presence of US troops at Russia’s border would be highly sensitive. Many in Russia’s military establishment are already upset that US servicemen have set up bases in Central Asia as part of the campaign in Afghanistan.

Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has said Moscow was not yet concerned about US bases in Central Asia, but only because it assumed they would close at the end of the Afghan operation.

Russian alarm bells were initially set ringing earlier this month when the US charge d’affaires in Tbilisi told a Georgian weekly the United States wanted to help create an anti-terrorism force within the Georgian Defence Ministry.

The remarks were the first public comment by a US official linking international terrorism to the Pankisi region and suggesting Washington was prepared to help combat it.

Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper said on Wednesday US military advisers had already arrived in Georgia, and speculated they could be preparing for a larger deployment by the US-led international anti-terrorism coalition.

A US embassy spokeswoman in Tbilisi said there were no US military advisers in the former Soviet republic.—Reuters