“The mountain gave birth to a mouse.”

“Watch yourselves, Russians! We’re dispatching experts!” A pathetic response by NATO… but given what we’ve seen with the U.N. bending like a wet noodle before Iran and North Korea, it’s expected.

NATO Urges Russia To Withdraw but Will Say Little Else
Envoy Mocks the Allies’ Declaration

BRUSSELS, Aug. 19 — NATO allies said Tuesday that there will be “business as usual” with Russia until its troops withdraw from all parts of Georgia, but Moscow’s refusal to bend to the West’s political will left the alliance with few options for punishment.

A declaration issued after an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers here called on Russia to “demonstrate — both in word and deed” — its commitment to a cooperative relationship with the alliance. It outlined a series of measures the alliance would take to help Georgia rebuild and ultimately bring it into the embrace of the West.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said NATO would coordinate assistance to what he said were more than 150,000 Georgians displaced by the fighting. The alliance, he said in a news conference, would dispatch experts to assess damage to Georgia’s infrastructure and armed forces.

But with no sign that the Russians have begun a full-scale withdrawal from Georgian territory — days after pledging to do so — diplomats privately described the document as an indication of the limits of what NATO’s diverse membership would agree to beyond denunciation.

The Russians themselves appeared to ridicule the declaration. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the document was a “clear indication of NATO’s interest and NATO’s concern,” Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to the alliance, assessed in his own news conference that “the mountain gave birth to a mouse.”