Russia ignored US and European criticism of its threat to use force against Georgia on Friday and accused Tbilisi of portraying Russia as an external enemy to prop up President Eduard Shevardnadze's "teetering" administration.
Russia's parliament endorsed President Vladimir Putin's proposal, made this week, to bomb rebel camps inside Georgia if Tbilisi did not deal with the fighters itself.
But Shevardnadze, Georgia's veteran president, said Washington's stand showed it understood his government's position. And he offered an olive branch to Putin, suggesting further talks to "set an example of friendly and proper relations."
Sergei Prikhodko, Putin's top foreign policy adviser, said Russia was getting impatient at Georgia's failure to act against rebels hiding in the remote Pankisi Gorge. Georgia, he said, had not even handed over guerrillas captured more than a month ago.
Putin wrote to world leaders on Thursday driving home his televised warning that Russia reserved the right to attack Chechen bases in Georgia. He said Russia had evidence guerrillas in Georgia helped plan last year's September attacks in the United States and 1999 bomb blasts in Russian cities.
Condemnation was swift from Washington, where a State Department spokesman said the United States would "oppose any unilateral military action by Russia inside Georgia."