The West hailed the `Rose Revolution` that swept Georgia five years ago Sunday but its shift from centuries of Russian influence set Moscow again on a collision course with former Cold War foes.

The arrival in power of Mikheil Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer who vowed to bring his country into the military alliance NATO and strengthen ties with the European Union was greeted enthusiastically in European capitals.

For the United States, where the administration of President George W. Bush made promoting democracy worldwide the centerpiece of its foreign policy, the prospect of Georgia joining the trans-Atlantic club was more than welcome.

But for Russia, his ambition to align a country in its historical backyard firmly with the West was a distasteful development that put its post-Soviet relations with the United States and Europe under massive strain.

All the more so when a year later pro-Russia politicians lost power in the `Orange Revolution` of Ukraine and then in the so-called `Tulip Revolution` in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

But the tensions exploded last August when Russia poured troops into Georgia over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. The West and Moscow engaged in verbal sparring not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War.

Russian defence expert Pavel Felgenhauer said of the conflict: `If the Rose Revolution was not a turning point in itself in relations between Russia and the West then it led to one.`

For Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, the 2008 conflict marked simply `the worst aggravation between Russia and the West in the post-communist era`.

The West was furious Moscow pushed its troops deep inside Georgian territory and for weeks defiantly refused to respond to repeated calls for a full pullout of troops.

`There is very little hope that the issue of Georgia is not going to stop haunting relations between the West and Russia in the near future,` Lipman said.

She warned that Russia continued to be disturbed by Saakashvili`s oft-stated ambition to join NATO, an organistion whose original aim was to be a military alliance against the Soviet Union.

`For Russia, the issue of Georgia`s NATO membership remains a burning issue. It does not seem this will happen in the near future but this does not mean Russia puts the issue of Georgia joining NATO to one side.`

Georgia is seen as unlikely winning NATO membership at its next meeting in April 2009 but NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has emphasised he would support efforts by former communist nations to join.

In a sign of the continued potential for strife over Georgia, Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov warned on Tuesday that Tbilisi`s efforts to rearm now risked causing a conflict even more serious than the one in August.

`We believe this policy would bring about consequences more serious than those in August,` he said.

Felgenhauer said that the sides has still failed to establish a sustainable ceasefire over the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which Russia has recognised as independent but Tbilisi refuses to give up.

`Right now, Georgia is a major problem in relations between Russia and the West and has the potential to become a much more serious problem,` he said.

`It is poisoning relations between Russia and the United States.`

Russia had for long been able to count on Georgia as part of its sphere of influence, firstly during battles with the Ottomans and the Persians in the nineteenth century and then in the Cold War under the Soviet Union.

After centuries of independence, most of modern day Georgia was annexed into imperial Russia during the 19th century and then became part of the Soviet Union, earning notoriety as the birthplace of Stalin.

The country only won back its independence in 1991 and from 1992 was ruled by the wily ex-Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze.