Russia to Leave Part of Georgia Zone
October 08, 2008
International Herald Tribune - From news reports
Russia will pull back Wednesday from the southern edge of a buffer zone inside Georgia adjacent to South Ossetia, a senior Russian officer said, ahead of a deadline Friday.
Russia has until Friday to withdraw its troops from so-called security zones inside Georgia proper - adjacent to South Ossetia and a second breakaway region, Abkhazia - under a cease-fire deal brokered by France following a brief war in Georgia in August.
Tomorrow in the first half of the day the pullout will occur of all six Russian peacekeeping checkpoints from the south of the security zone," Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the region, said Tuesday in the South Ossetian town of Java.
The pullback will be completed in one day," he said.
A second line of Russian troops is located farther north, on the de facto South Ossetian border. It was not immediately clear whether the pullback would be matched in the Abkhaz buffer zone.
Russia plans to station more than 7,000 soldiers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which it recognized as independent states after its August counter-offensive to repel a Georgian attack in South Ossetia.
A European Union mission monitoring the cease-fire would not comment on whether the pullout from the six checkpoints would mean Russia was in compliance with the cease-fire deal.
We will have to verify for ourselves to make sure the deal has been met," a spokesman for the mission said. He said the pullback would be a "positive" development.
At the Karaleti checkpoint, 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, south of the South Ossetian boundary, a crane was lifting concrete roadblocks and excavators were filling in trenches.
Russia sent its forces into South Ossetia after Georgian forces attacked the capital, Tskhinvali.
The Georgian police are due to move in behind retreating Russian forces, to avoid a security vacuum that the EU monitors say could be exploited by militias active in the region.
But Moscow said it would hold the EU responsible for security in the border zones.
In the document signed on Sept. 8, the European Union assumed responsibility for security in these zones, so all enquiries on the matter will now be referred to them, not Georgia," the Interfax news agency quoted a top Kremlin foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, as saying.
Relations between the two sides remain very tense, and Russia on Monday accused the Georgian government of "seeking to provoke new hostilities" even as Russian peacekeepers were dismantling their checkpoints.
The authorities in Abkhazia said that an Abkhaz border guard had been killed Monday in an exchange of fire with gunmen on the Georgian side. On Friday, a car bomb in Tskhinvali killed eight Russian soldiers and three civilians.
Shota Utiashvili, a senior official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, denied any Georgian involvement in the attacks.
Originally published by Reuters, IHT.
(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
A service of YellowBrix, Inc.
Russia will pull back Wednesday from the southern edge of a buffer zone inside Georgia adjacent to South Ossetia, a senior Russian officer said, ahead of a deadline Friday.
Russia has until Friday to withdraw its troops from so-called security zones inside Georgia proper - adjacent to South Ossetia and a second breakaway region, Abkhazia - under a cease-fire deal brokered by France following a brief war in Georgia in August.
Tomorrow in the first half of the day the pullout will occur of all six Russian peacekeeping checkpoints from the south of the security zone," Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the region, said Tuesday in the South Ossetian town of Java.
The pullback will be completed in one day," he said.
A second line of Russian troops is located farther north, on the de facto South Ossetian border. It was not immediately clear whether the pullback would be matched in the Abkhaz buffer zone.
Russia plans to station more than 7,000 soldiers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which it recognized as independent states after its August counter-offensive to repel a Georgian attack in South Ossetia.
A European Union mission monitoring the cease-fire would not comment on whether the pullout from the six checkpoints would mean Russia was in compliance with the cease-fire deal.
We will have to verify for ourselves to make sure the deal has been met," a spokesman for the mission said. He said the pullback would be a "positive" development.
At the Karaleti checkpoint, 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, south of the South Ossetian boundary, a crane was lifting concrete roadblocks and excavators were filling in trenches.
Russia sent its forces into South Ossetia after Georgian forces attacked the capital, Tskhinvali.
The Georgian police are due to move in behind retreating Russian forces, to avoid a security vacuum that the EU monitors say could be exploited by militias active in the region.
But Moscow said it would hold the EU responsible for security in the border zones.
In the document signed on Sept. 8, the European Union assumed responsibility for security in these zones, so all enquiries on the matter will now be referred to them, not Georgia," the Interfax news agency quoted a top Kremlin foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, as saying.
Relations between the two sides remain very tense, and Russia on Monday accused the Georgian government of "seeking to provoke new hostilities" even as Russian peacekeepers were dismantling their checkpoints.
The authorities in Abkhazia said that an Abkhaz border guard had been killed Monday in an exchange of fire with gunmen on the Georgian side. On Friday, a car bomb in Tskhinvali killed eight Russian soldiers and three civilians.
Shota Utiashvili, a senior official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, denied any Georgian involvement in the attacks.
Originally published by Reuters, IHT.
(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
A service of YellowBrix, Inc.
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