KODZHORI - Four shiny Mercedes trucks gingerly made their way down the rutted main road of Georgia's commando training center, and Capt. Georgi Bliadze watched with pride - and an ironic recollection.

When soldiers used the trucks for a recent trip into the countryside, he said, people were so surprised to see new military equipment that a rumor quickly spread that German troops were intervening in Georgia.

During Georgia's 10 years of independence, its army has been equipped mostly with ragtag leftovers from the Soviet era. But growing cooperation with the West - including a U.S. operation to train troops to fight terrorists - is raising hopes Georgia can develop an army up to the country's daunting challenges.

The training center at Kodzhori, where some of the American instructors are to work, bears deep scars from a decade of low funding. Located six miles (10 kilometers) west of the capital, Tbilisi, its roads are crumbling, its outbuildings stained by rust and assorted crud, its main building an assortment of nearly bare offices linked by long dimly lit corridors decorated in mildew and flaking paint.

The only resource the base has in abundance is woods and steep hills and gullies - the kind of terrain that commandos must know how to fight in if they ever do battle with the Muslim fighters in the Pankisi Gorge, which is adjacent to Russia's secessionist Chechnya region.

The fighters in Pankisi reputedly have ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network, which underlies Washington plans for a dlrs 64 million training program for Georgian troops.

A dozen commando trainees marched up a steep, woodsy path to Bliadze, halted and listened to his instructions on how to position themselves in maneuvers through the woods to reduce their chances of being shot and how to react if gunfire breaks out.

The trainees followed the instructions diligently but hesitantly, kneeling slowly to get to the ground rather than throwing themselves. Some tentatively positioned their hands as if holding guns, like children playing soldier. A shaggy dog accompanying them frisked around awhile, then ran off in search of better entertainment.

Afterward, Bliadze seemed apologetic about the desultory exercise.

Once more equipment arrives, "they know they'll have every kind of weapon and can do everything. Then they can just jump in the mud with a smile," he said.

Bliadze said his trainees are especially short of assault weapons and need night-vision equipment.

The Georgian military lacks so much it accepts donations of almost anything: uniforms and radios from Turkey, the Mercedes trucks from Germany and Huey helicopters from the United States.

"And even the Hueys are not up-to-date these days," said Deputy Defense Minister Gela Bezhuashvili.

Nonetheless, he marveled at the largesse of Western donors, noting the dlrs 64 million being spent by the United States is about three times the entire budget for Georgia's 17,000-man military.

Receiving the foreign contributions boosts the military's capability but also seems to rankle Georgians' pride. Officials are quick to portray the country as not just a mendicant but a strategic partner for the West.

"It's not the case that America is helping us with grain and money. The cooperation in the military sphere has the character of a new respect," President Eduard Shevardnadze said on television a few days ago.

Georgia occupies a key position straddling the narrow trans-Caucasus region that links Europe and Asia, and its troubles have long concerned observers. Along with the reported terrorist presence in Pankisi, its stability is threatened by the unresolved status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, regions where separatists drove out the army in the 1990s.

Georgian officials say that however strong their military becomes, they are committed to seeking a peaceful resolution of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia disputes. And they say they won't rush to launch an assault in Pankisi.

"You can't clean up the situation with a military operation," Bezhuashvili said. "But Pankisi will be cleaned up one way or another. I promise you that."