At an extraordinary meeting held in Nato's headquarters in Brussels on August 19 2008, the military alliance's foreign ministers decided the bloc would help Georgia overcome the consequences of the recent military conflict with Russia, the press service of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Nato will send a special team to help the Georgian authorities evaluate the losses and damages, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin told reporters after the meeting. Nato also engaged itself in establishing a reliable communication connection with Georgia and decided to help Tbilisi in the field of cyber security.

The foreign ministers decided that for the future the relations between Nato and Georgia will be discussed by a special committee that is to be established. According to Kalfin, this is a clear engagement on the part of Nato to intensify the dialogue with Tbilisi.

At the meeting, the ministers agreed that the Russian reaction in the conflict with Georgia had been disproportionate both in size and in territory, the Foreign Ministry said. According to them the dialogue between Nato and Russia should continue but it can hardly remain unchanged.

On August 19, Kalfin also met in Brussels with his Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili. He told her Bulgaria would continue helping Georgia in the future, especially in the field of overcoming the consequences of the conflict. Tkeshelashvili, for her part, thanked Kalfin for Bulgaria's balanced stand on the recent events.

Nato demanded that Russia pulls out its troops, which are still on Georgian territory, and observe the terms of the ceasefire brokered by the European Union and signed by both parties at the weekend.

"The Alliance is considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the Nato-Russia relationship," the Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in prepared remarks, as quoted by world news agencies. "We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual."

Moscow wasted no time in replying, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accusing the alliance of bias and lack of objectivity, as well as re-iterating its position that it only intervened after Georgian troops attemped to regain control over the break-away region of South Ossetia, which Russia has been supporting for more than a decade now.

"It appears to me that Nato is trying to portray the aggressor as the victim, to whitewash a criminal regime and to save a failing regime," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Georgian toops launched ground operations in South Ossetia on August 7, in responce to what it called a Russian "provocation". Despite early successes, including briefly taking over the region's capital Tskhinvali, Georgian troops were quickly pushed back by Russian forces, which advanced deep into Georgian territory to effectively cut off communication between the western and eastern parts of the country.