By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS, Sept 5 (Reuters) - An increasingly wealthy and confident Russia has been testing the West with its invasion of Georgia and it is likely there will be more such crises in the region, a senior Czech official said on Friday. "We (in the West) are being tested; we should be careful and we should be firm," said Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Tomas Pojar, who met with senior U.S. officials in Washington this week on Czech plans to host part of a missile shield. In an interview with a small group of reporters at the United Nations, Pojar said his country believed the Russian invasion of Georgia was not the last crisis that would pit the new bolder Russia against the West. "We would not be surprised if similar events ... develop in Crimea," he said. Some analysts have also said the Crimea region in southern Ukraine could be used by Russia to destabilize the country. It hosts Russia's Black Sea fleet in the port of Sevastopol, and the majority of people living there are ethnic Russians. "We hope that this is not going to happen," said Pojar. "But ... the situation there is not very stable and to provoke more instability would probably not be that difficult." Russia invaded Georgia last month to thwart an attempt by the Georgian military to retake the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, which, like another Georgian rebel region known as Abkhazia, broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990s. CZECH WARNING Pojar said that the Czechs, who were subjected to a Soviet-led invasion 40 years ago of what was then still communist Czechoslovakia, were not surprised when war broke out in the Caucasus last month. "We were predicting it was possible, that there may be some escalation," he said. "Of course, we didn't know when, if it would be for sure. We were trying to avoid it and warn everyone to be cautious." Western officials have said the Georgian leadership did not listen to those who advised caution. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has been touring southern Caucasus and Black Sea states this week, where he told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that Washington remained fully committed to Tbilisi's bid to join NATO, despite Russia's fierce opposition to the alliance's eastward expansion. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko told Cheney on Friday NATO membership was vital to protect his country, which shares a long land border with Russia and has many ethnic Russians. The Czechs and the Poles have infuriated Moscow by agreeing to allow the United States to build a U.S. missile shield. Pojar said the Georgian conflict had no impact on the Czech negotiations with the United States on the radar system to be built on Czech territory, if it is approved by parliament. One senior Russian military officer recently suggested Moscow could use military force to destroy interceptor missiles to be stationed in Poland. Pojar said he was confident the Czechs and Poles could rely on their fellow NATO members to come to their aid militarily in the event Russia attacked the missile shield, something he said Prague doubted would ever happen. (Editing by Eric Walsh)
Humanitarian aid is unloaded from the USS Mount Whitney at the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, September 5, 2008. The USS Mount Whitney, a sophisticated command warship which acts as ...
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