UN Security Council session has seen sharp exchange of barbs between the Georgian and Russian, on the one hand, and Russian and U.S. diplomats on the other on August 10.

Speaking at the public debate of the Security Council session the U.S. ambassador in the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Georgia’s President “Saakashvili must go.”

“This is totally unacceptable; that crosses the line,” he added.

Khalilzad then looked asked the Russian diplomat if Moscow was looking for “regime change.”

Churkin did not directly address the question but said there are leaders who “become an obstacle,” Reuters reported.

“Sometimes those leaders need to contemplate how useful they have become to their people,” Churkin told journalists after the session.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s UN ambassador, Irakli Alasania, who was invited to participate at the Council’s public debate, said it was “Russia's intention to erase Georgian statehood, to exterminate Georgian people.”

And the Russian diplomat accused Tbilisi of waging “genocide” against the South Ossetian people – the allegation Alasania said was “Soviet propaganda” and a pretext to justify its military aggression against Georgia.

He also said Russia intended to repeat what it did in Chechnya.