Moscow — President Medvedev of Russia met his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, yesterday, seeking support from Russia’s biggest Asian ally for its recognition of two breakaway Georgian regions, a move widely condemned in the West.

Mr. Medvedev “informed” Mr. Hu about his decision to recognize the statehood of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during a meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, the president’s spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova, told reporters without elaborating. China has yet to comment.

The fact that China hasn’t come out in support of Russia’s position “doesn’t mean that China is isolating Russia,” a government spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in a telephone briefing. While Mr. Medvedev called on other countries to follow Russia’s lead in recognizing the two regions, “to initiate wide support is not a primary goal,” Mr. Peskov said.

Russia said it plans to establish diplomatic relations with the regions as Russian warships docked at the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi, the Interfax news service reported. Russia’s recognition of the regions drew condemnation from Western leaders including President Bush, who asked Mr. Medvedev to “reconsider this irresponsible decision.”

“Russia’s main aim is to get support from the organization for its military action and approval in one form or another for recognizing South Ossetian independence,” an analyst in Moscow for the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, Yevgeny Volk, said. “It is clear that Russia is using it as a counterweight to the West in the conflict and its recognition of South Ossetia.”

While Russia wants diplomatic recognition from members of the group, Mr. Volk said such a decision for countries like China and India, which have separatist regions of their own, would amount to “chopping the branch they sit on.”

The Shanghai organization in recent months has condemned an attempt by Taiwan to seek greater international recognition and unrest in Tibet.

A Taiwanese referendum in March that called for the country to join the United Nations under the name “Taiwan” posed a “threat to stability in the region,” the organization said. It called protests in Tibet last spring “illegal actions” and said it considers Tibet “an inalienable part” of China, according to statements on the organization’s Web site.

In addition to Russia and China, the organization includes the former Soviet republics Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, while India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mongolia have observer status. The meeting in Dushanbe will discuss terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan, the Kremlin press service said.

Britian renewed Western criticism of Russia’s actions. Russia has a “big responsibility” not to begin a new Cold War over its conflict with Georgia, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a speech at Kyiv-Mohyla university in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.

Mr. Miliband accused Russia of trying to “redraw the map” of Europe by recognizing the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway regions and said the move “ended the post Cold War period of growing geopolitical calm in and around Europe.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia countered that eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is to blame. “The completely unfounded and unjustified expansion of NATO is leading to this kind of division” of Europe, he told reporters in Dushanbe.