Canada's ambassador was summoned to Russia's foreign ministry and handed a note informing him of the expulsion of the head and deputy head of the NATO representative office in Moscow "in response to an unfriendly act by NATO against Russian envoys to NATO," the Russian foreign ministry said.

The explanation was a reference to NATO's expulsion of two Russian envoys accredited at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels for alleged involvement in a spy scandal, a charge Moscow has furiously denied.

Russia's outspoken ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, hammered home Moscow's dim view of the alliance in an interview published in the daily Izvestia.

"This organisation is becoming more and more unpredictable.... The alliance can't seem to behave itself in a respectable, stable and decent way," Rogozin told the newspaper.

A spokesman for Canada's embassy, Nicholas Brousseau, told AFP that Canada "strongly" regretted Russia's tit-for-tat decision to expel the two diplomats and said NATO was interesting in patching up ties with Moscow.

"Canada and NATO allies have been seeking ways to re-engage Russia. The decision to terminate the accreditation of NATO officials is counter-productive to this effort," said Brousseau.

Tensions between Russia and the alliance have risen over NATO military exercises in Georgia starting this week, despite efforts to improve ties that were severely strained over the Russian war with Georgia last August.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin informed US counterpart Daniel Fried of Russian concerns about Georgia in a phone conversation on Wednesday, after Tbilisi accused Moscow of backing an armed uprising in the country, the foreign ministry said.

Georgia's tendency to see Russia's hand in domestic political problems "is becoming a serious destabilizing factor in the region," the ministry said.

Earlier NATO expelled two Russian envoys including the son of Russia's ambassador to the European Union in connection with an Estonian spy scandal that unearthed serious leaks of sensitive defence-related information.

Russia continues to take issue with the aims of the NATO alliance, which was born out of the Cold War confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union and has steadily expanded to take in ex-Warsaw Pact members since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Russia's foreign ministry said Tuesday that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had pulled out of a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council this month intended to break the ice.

The heightened tensions come despite hopes of a gradual improvement in ties following the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, as well as conciliatory words from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev has however described the military exercises starting in Georgia as "an overt provocation."

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