(PARIS) - A senior US official called Friday for solidarity between the European Union and the United States to confront Russia's military surge in Georgia and consider moves to isolate Moscow.

Washington will work with EU governments to ensure "Russia is not able to have it both ways, to be in and out of the international community," US Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried told journalists.

His remarks came a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped up US criticism of Russia, saying Moscow had put itself on a "one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance."

Washington has warned that Russia is putting its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at risk over its actions in Georgia.

Fried, the US State Department's number two official, said he would be meeting with EU counterparts in the coming weeks in Washington and on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York to agree on "tactics and strategy".

While the United States has called for a tough stance toward Russia, the 27-nation EU is divided over how to respond to the Georgia-Russia conflict and the bloc refrained from imposing sanctions at an emergency summit this month.

The European Union, under the presidency of France, negotiated the ceasefire that ended fighting between Georgian and Russian forces and has been pushing for a full withdrawal of Russian troops from the former Soviet republic.

Fried said EU pressure may be working.

"It may be that Russia is rethinking in the face of very strong international pressure, we certainly hope so," he said in a telephone news conference with Europe-based journalists from Washington.

"It may be that Russia did not count on such a strong reaction particulary from Europe," he added. "Russia did not face a divided transatlantic community as it may have counted on."

Russia sent troops deep inside Georgia last month in response to a Georgian offensive to retake control of South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed breakaway region that is internationally recognised as part of Georgia.

Moscow drew broad international condemnation after it recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian region, as independent states.

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