PRIVATE Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, travelling to the lawless gorge which both Tbilisi and Washington say was bombed by Russian planes, accused those who ordered the attack of barbarism on Tuesday. The United States has rebuked Russia over the bombing in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge where Moscow says separatist rebels from its breakaway Chechnya province operate with impunity. Russia denies the cross-border bombing raid but the accusations are beginning to strain what have been unusually warm relations with the United States in recent months. "This is not just a tragedy for one family. This is a tragedy for the entire village, for Georgia, for the world. What happened in the bombing travels across borders," Shevardnadze said at the funeral of a villager killed in last Friday's raid. "We do not blame the Russian people. The guilty party is the one who gave the order to allow such an act of barbarism before Georgia and the world," he told mourners in the town of Matani, some 180 km (120 miles) northeast of the capital Tbilisi. Later, he will drive to villages in the Pankisi Gorge. U.S. support for Georgia's version of events is the first time Washington has taken diplomatic side with Tbilisi against Russia since deploying military advisors there in May. Washington argues that the need to control Islamic militants in the Pankisi Gorge is part of its global war on terrorism. "We don't want to solve the Pankisi problem by the methods which Russia has used in Chechnya. The Russians learned something in Chechnya. But what was the price - thousands dead," Georgian Deputy Defence Minister Gela Bezhuashvili told Reuters. Shevardnadze sent 1,000 heavily armed troops into the gorge on Sunday to counter Russian complaints of inaction. The largely lawless gorge has been become the latest sore point in relations between the two former Soviet allies. (Reuters)