Elsewhere, Russia exchanged POWs with Georgia and pulled back some troops from the strategic city of Gori.

It was a day of deeply mixed messages that left the small, war-battered country full of anxiety about whether Russia was aiming for a long-term military presence in Georgia or was just trying to inflict the maximum damage before adhering to a troop withdrawal that Russia promised under a EU-brokered cease-fire.

At an emergency meeting in Brussels, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her 25 Nato counterparts demanded that Russia immediately withdraw its troops from Georgia, a US ally that wants to join Nato.

The Nato foreign ministers announced yesterday that the alliance "cannot continue with business as usual" with Russia as long as its troops remain in Georgia.

But it was in Poti - Georgia's key oil port city - where Russia flexed its military muscle most visibly.

Russian forces blocked access to the city's naval and commercial ports yesterday morning and towed the missile boat Dioskuria, one of the Georgian navy's most sophisticated vessels, out of sight of observers.

A loud explosion was heard minutes later.

Several hours later, an Associated Press photographer saw Russian trucks and armoured personnel carriers leaving the port with about 20 blindfolded and handcuffed men riding on them.

Port spokesman Eduard Mashevoriani said the men were Georgian soldiers.

The Russians also took with them four Humvees that were at the port awaiting shipment back to the United States, equipment that had been used in earlier US-Georgian military exercises.

The deputy head of Russia's general staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said in Moscow that Russian forces plan to remain in Poti until a local administration is formed, but did not give further details.

He also justified previous seizures of Georgian soldiers as a necessary crackdown on soldiers who were "out of any kind of control ...

acting without command."

An AP television crew has seen Russian troops in and around Poti for days, with local port officials saying the Russians had destroyed radar, boats and other Coast Guard equipment there.

Russian troops have also been busy at the nearby Georgian military base in Senaki.

Nampa-AP

World News Headlines Of The Last 48 Hours

•  UN says Congo rebels pulling back 'in hundreds'
•  Doctors transplant windpipe
•  Rwandan suspect extradited to France
•  Tiny, long-lost primate rediscovered in Indonesia
•  Indian navy sinks pirate 'mother ship'
•  Mbeki to review Zimbabwe constitution bill
•  Pudgiest UK pets to slim
•  50 000 displaced by floods
•  Cholera threatens 1,4 million in Zim
•   Zim court drops two charges against oppositon leader
•  City threatens blind woman over unpaid 1-cent bill
•  Obama reaches out to Georgian leader
•  Rebels withdraw from DRC town
•  President-elect Obama eyes 'team of rivals'
•  International court to prosecute Congo's Thomas Lubanga