GORI, (Georgia) - RUSSIAN forces pushed a second front deep into Georgia, seizing towns and a military base in the western parts of the country. Georgia's president said his country had been effectively cut in half with the capture of the main east-west highway near the central city of Gori.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied Georgian claims on Monday of taking Gori and rejected allegations that its forces were preparing to head for the capital, Tbilisi, according to Russian news reports.

But it appeared that Russia aimed to use its huge military to intimidate its diminutive neighbour and force it to abandon any hope of regaining control of two Russian-backed separatist provinces.

Russia's massive and multi-pronged offensive has drawn wide criticism from the West, but Russia has stiff-armed calls for a cease-fire and angrily justified its actions as necessary to protect its citizens; most of the residents of the separatist regions have Russian passports.

Russian officials, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have accused Georgia of committing genocide by launching an offensive last week to try to retake control of separatist South Ossetia.

Georgia's pro-US leadership in turn alleges Russia aims to violently overturn its government on the pretext of protecting Russian citizens.

Fighting raged on Monday around Tskhinvali, the region's capital.

Russia also launched new air raids across Georgia, with at least one sending screaming civilians running for cover.

The Georgian president, Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, told CNN late Monday that Russian forces were cleansing Abkhazia of ethnic Georgians.

'I directly accuse Russia of ethnic cleansing', he said.

At an emergency Security Council meeting in New York asked for by Georgia, UN officials B. Lynn Pascoe and Edmond Mulet confirmed that Russian troops have driven well beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, UN diplomats said on condition of anonymity because it was a closed session.

They said Russian airborne troops were not meeting any resistance while taking control of Georgia's Senaki army base.

'A full military invasion of Georgia is going on', Georgian Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters later. 'Now I think Security Council has to act'. The reported capture of Gori and the towns of Senaki, Zugdidi and Kurga came despite a top Russian general's claim earlier on Monday that Russia had no plans to enter Georgian territory.

By taking Gori, which sits on Georgia's only east-west highway, Russia can cut off eastern Georgia from the country's western Black Sea coast.

'(Russian forces) came to the central route and cut off connections between western and eastern Georgia', Mr Saakashvili told a national security meeting.

The news agency Interfax, however, cited a Russian Defence Ministry official as denying Gori was captured. Attempts to reach Gori residents by telephone late on Monday did not go through.

Security Council head Alexander Lomaia said on Monday it was not immediately clear if Russian forces would advance on Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. But the Russian Defence Ministry denied such intentions, the Interfax and RIA-Novosti news agencies said.

The Georgian president urged his compatriots not to panic and told residents of the capital not to flee, saying Tbilisi was not under imminent threat. He said residents would have at least seven or eight hours warning of any impending advance on the capital.

The two-front battlefield was a major escalation in the conflict that blew up late on Thursday after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the separatist province of South Ossetia.

Even as Mr Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge on Monday with EU mediators, Russia flexed its military muscle and appeared determined to subdue the small US ally that has been pressing for NATO membership.

On Monday afternoon, Russian troops invaded Georgia from the western separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces were busy with fighting in the central region around South Ossetia.

Russian armored personnel carriers moved into Senaki, a town 32 kilometres inland from Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti, Mr Lomaia said.

Russian news agencies late Monday cited the Defence Ministry as saying the troops had left Senaki 'after liquidating the danger', but did not give details.

Russian forces also moved into Zugdidi, near Abkhazia, and seized police stations, while their Abkhazian allies took control of the nearby village of Kurga, according to witnesses and Georgian officials.

In Zugdidi, an AP reporter saw five or six Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building. Several tanks and other armored vehicles were moving through the town but the streets were nearly deserted, with shops, restaurants and banks all shut down.

In the city of Gori, an AP reporter heard artillery fire and Georgian soldiers warned locals to get out because Russian tanks were approaching. Hundreds of terrified residents fled toward Tbilisi using any means of transport they could find. Many stood along the road trying to flag down passing cars.

An AP film crew saw Georgian tanks and military vehicles speeding along the road from Gori to Tbilisi. Firing began and people ran for cover. A couple of cars could be seen in flames along the side of the road.

Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s - and both have close ties with Moscow.

Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Ossetia's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.

The Russia response was swift and overpowering - thousands of troops and tanks poured in.

Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow on Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.

Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 11 kilometres south of Tskhinvali inside Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian warplane struck a house. The walls of neighbouring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded.

Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 metres away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.

President George W. Bush and other Western leaders have sharply criticised Russia's military response as disproportionate and say Russia appears to want the Georgian government overthrown. They have also complained that Russian warplanes - buzzing over Georgia since Friday - have bombed Georgian oil sites and factories far from the conflict zone.

The world's seven largest economic powers urged Russia to accept an immediate cease-fire on Monday and agree to international mediation.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues from the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations spoke by telephone and pledged their support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Mr Putin criticised the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim, instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.

Mr Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge on Monday proposed by the French and Finnish foreign ministers. The EU envoys headed to Moscow to try to persuade Russia to accept it.

Mr Saakashvili said Russia has sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport.

Abkhazia's separatists declared Sunday they would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.

At least 9,000 Russian troops and 350 armored vehicles were in Abkhazia, according to a Russian military commander.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people have been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees who fled Tskhinvali over the weekend said hundreds had been killed. -- AP