President George Bush's decision to use the military to send humanitarian aid to Georgia will heighten tensions further in the region, foreign affairs analysts predicted last night.

President George Bush's decision to use the military to send humanitarian aid to Georgia will heighten tensions further in the region, foreign affairs analysts predicted last night.

Jonathan Eyal, director of studies at defence and security think-tank the Royal United Services Institute, said the US was sending a "none too subtle" message to Moscow that it would defend Georgia's borders.

The decision would be viewed "extremely badly" in Russia, where there is widespread suspicion that the US had a hand in Georgia's decision to begin operations in the disputed province South Ossetia last week.

President Bush announced military aircraft and naval forces would deliver aid in a "vigorous and ongoing" campaign that would also see Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visit the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Olga Olider, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for the Rand Corporation, a non-profit think-tank, said Bush was sending a message to the Russians that "we can move ships to the Black Sea and we can move aircraft into Georgia if we choose to".

It also signals that "we can help out the Georgians with something more than humanitarian aid," she said.

Janusz Bugajski, director of the New Democracies programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the US public policy advice network, believed Bush's actions should "persuade Russia from any further aggression".

"I wouldn't stake a lot of money on it, but I wouldn't think Russia would want to provoke something with the United States," he said.

Dr Eyal said the move was not a "prelude to military intervention" but was an attempt to shift the focus on to the human cost of the conflict. But, he added, it was also a "none too subtle reminder to the Russians" that the US is not prepared to accept South Ossetia and the other breakaway province Abkhazia becoming "no-go areas" to Georgians.

"While the US is not considering any military involvement, it is fully prepared to defend the territorial integrity of Georgia, which is what it has been saying all the time," Dr Eyal said.

The Russian media have been openly suggesting the US had "orchestrated this entire mini-war" and the public did not believe Georgia would have launched its offensive without a green light from Washington.

Dr Eyal said there was "very little evidence" for that, and the US appeared to have been taken by surprise when violence erupted last week.

President Bush has come under increasing pressure in the US to back up tough talk about the Georgian crisis with action after being criticised for a soft approach in thawing the US's icy relationship with Russia.

Meanwhile, as Georgians rally behind the country in its conflict with Russia, voices of dissent have been raised against President Mikhail Saakashvili for taking Tbilisi into a war it could never win.

Mr Saakashvili came to power in 2003 on a promise to reunite the country by reining in separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and steering Georgia towards membership of Nato.

The two regions threw off Georgian rule in wars in the early 1990s and declared independence. No state has recognised them, though Russia has given political and financial support.

Yesterday, Mr Saakashvili flanked by the leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in a media briefing said Russian tanks were attacking and "rampaging" through the Georgian town of despite the ceasefire and "encroaching upon the capital".

"This is the kind of ceasefire that, I don't know, they had with Afghanistan I guess in 1979," Mr Saakashvili said. "There is no ceasefire."

But journalists in Gori, the birthplace of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, said they had seen no Russian tanks.