The FINANCIAL — Russia has agreed to pull its troops from a buffer zone around the Georgian breakaway territory of South Ossetia, Voice of America reports. Georgia said that Russian troops, instead of showing signs of withdrawal, had reinforced their outposts outside the port town of Poti over the weekend.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced the agreement in a joint new conference in Moscow Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to Voice of America. Mr. Medvedev said the withdrawal will begin as soon as international peacekeepers are in place.
Mr. Sarkozy told reporters all Russian forces will leave core Georgia within one month.
Mr. Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating European Union presidency, drew up last month's cease-fire agreement between Georgia and Russia.
Russia insists its remaining troops in and near the Georgian breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are functioning as peacekeepers who are complying with the cease-fire. But Georgia accuses Moscow of violating the cease-fire by deploying additional troops to key checkpoints in Georgian territory.
Mr. Sarkozy traveled to Tbilisi later today for talks with Georgian leaders.
Russian forces pushed into Georgia last month after the Georgian military tried to retake control of South Ossetia. Russia has since recognized the independence of both territories, drawing widespread international condemnation. Nicaragua is the only other country besides Russia to recognize the regions.
Separately, the International Court of Justice in The Hague opened a hearing on Georgia's bid for emergency measures to halt what the Tbilisi government calls Russia's "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Poti-based journalist working for the RFE/RL Georgian Service also reported that Russian checkpoints had been reinforced. She wrote on her blog that the outposts had been reinforced by six armored vehicles.
According to Civil Georgia website Russia said on September 8 that although it was not against the presence of international monitors in Georgia, it thought “an autonomous EU monitoring mission” would be inappropriate.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said after an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Avignon on September 6 that an agreement had been reached to send “an autonomous ESDP [European Security and Defence Policy] mission [to Georgia] as part of the OSCE presence in the first instance.”
“We believe that [the EU’s autonomous mission] will lead to unnecessary fragmentation of international monitoring efforts, which currently are already underway by the UN [in the Abkhaz conflict zone] and the OSCE [in areas adjacent to South Ossetia],” Andrey Nesterenko, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on September 8.
He, however, also said that Russia supported a further increase in the number of unarmed OSCE military monitors on the ground.
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