Miliband follows Cameron to Georgia

Monday, 18 August 2008 12:00 AM

Foreign secretary David Miliband is set to visit Georgia on Wednesday, nearly a week after David Cameron arrived in the country.

The Foreign Office is insisting the visit is "not in response and had nothing to do with Mr Cameron's visit", but Gordon Brown was said to have been caught off-guard by the Tory leader's visit over the weekend, on the way to a holiday in Turkey.

The Georgians were said to have been impressed by the robust line Mr Cameron adopted over the conflict with Russia, where he called for Georgian membership of Nato to be sped up and for a ban on visas for Russian citizens visiting Britain. This kind of talk earned him an audience with president Mikhail Saakashvili.

That trip left MPs bemused as to why the leader of the opposition was visiting a conflict zone before the foreign secretary.

There are no further details being released about who Mr Miliband plans to meet while in Georgia, but he is expected to travel there on Wednesday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

Speaking in Tblisi after his meeting with president Saakashvili, Mr Cameron said: "I'm here as a politician representing one of the world's oldest democracies to show support for one of the world's newest.

"We are absolutely right to stand by a country, its democracy and its territorial integrity when it has been violated in this way."

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• europe
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• foreign policy
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• russia