Washington ? Hundreds of U.S. troops could be sent to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help train its military to fight guerrillas linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

“So long as there’s al-Qaida anywhere we will help the host countries root them out and bring them to justice,” President Bush said Wednesday.

Bush said U.S. aid to Georgia in the fight against terrorists would be “mostly equipment and technical advice.” At a round-table discussion with former welfare recipients, he told reporters it would be in keeping with his promise to the American people to fight terrorism everywhere.

Though Georgia has asked for military assistance, the two governments have not approved any specific plan, which is “still very much in the formative stages,” said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Still, the proposal drew a warning on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, questioning the expanding role of U.S. troops in anti-terrorism operations.

“If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world that’s going to keep us going beyond doomsday,” Byrd said, adding that he wants “no blank checks to be written,” for such operations.

Pentagon officials would like any training in Georgia to begin with classroom sessions in Tbilisi that would evolve into more specific training at military bases outside the area of conflict, said one defense official on condition of anonymity.

He said the American group could number between 45 and 200.

Fleischer said U.S. troops would not accompany Georgian fighters into combat.

Some officials have said al-Qaida-linked militants including several dozen who had been in Afghanistan are operating in the area of the Pankisi Gorge, near Georgia’s border with Russia’s breakaway republic of Chechnya.

But asked if the United States thought the terrorists operating in Georgia had links to al-Qaida, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, “Unclear. We won’t rule it out.”

A U.S. team of about 40 members visited Georgia last fall to assess Georgian units’ capabilities and U.S. helicopters have already been sent to the region, Lt. Col. Ed Loomis, a spokesman for U.S. European Command, said Wednesday in Germany.

He said the team covered “a wide range of specialties” among them members of Special Operations Command Europe and representatives of EUCOM headquarters.

Looms declined to address future plans, but said the United States already has provided Georgia with 10 UH-1H Iroquois helicopters six of them intended for flying and four for spare parts. A U.S. service member and six contractors have been there since November to give training in how to operate the aircraft, he said.

At a Pentagon press conference, Pace said it had been decided before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America that the unarmed helicopters would be given to Georgia to help them move their soldiers around.

In Tbilisi, a spokeswoman for the Georgian Defense Ministry, Shorena Esakiya, said, “U.S. military advisers are coming to Georgia to assist in training a special task force capable of resisting terrorists.”

She said the force will be led by Otar Shalikashvili, an assistant to the U.S. defense secretary.

Esakiya denied that either U.S. or German special forces were in Georgia and said there were no plans for such forces from either country.

Paapa Gaprindashvili, head of the Georgian Defense Ministry’s international department, said Wednesday that “there are five military experts in Georgia now.” He said the advisers would help Georgia set up “an anti-terrorist subdivision.”

The Americans’ role in Georgia could be similar to what U.S. troops are doing in the Philippines. A group of 160 U.S. special forces troops is training Philippine soldiers how to fight the Muslim militant Abu Sayyaf group, which also has been linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

Bush administration officials have said America’s war against terrorism will take different forms in different countries. Training local troops to fight terror groups is one way to do so without putting large numbers of U.S. soldiers in danger and can blunt criticism that America is fighting someone else’s battles for them.

The situation in Georgia is sensitive. Bush has hailed Russia as a strong partner in the anti-terrorism fight, and Russia has billed its multiyear battle with Muslim separatists in Chechnya as another front in the global terror war.

But assertions that al-Qaida-linked fighters are in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge have been a sore spot between Georgia and Russia. Georgia has been cool to Russian suggestions of joint military operations in the gorge. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in November accused Russian warplanes of bombing the gorge, a charge Russia denied.

Shevardnadze indicated last week that he would consider a joint operation in the gorge with the United States, but not with Russia. Aides later said that no such joint operation had been proposed.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the administration believes that Georgia’s ability to combat terrorists serves Russia’s interest.

Shevardnadze is wary of any Russian military presence in Georgia on grounds that it could erode Georgia’s sovereignty.

But Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said U.S. troops in Georgia “could further jeopardize an already complicated situation.”

A senior U.S. official said the administration will try to turn the Russians around.