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Last Updated: Oct 28th, 2008 - 17:57:18 |
TBILISI (Reuters) - European Union observers begin monitoring a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia on Wednesday after a brief war in August, though without access yet to the Russian-controlled conflict zone.
Under the terms of a French-brokered pullback deal, the 200-plus monitors are initially to oversee the withdrawal of Russian troops from two "security zones" deep inside Georgian territory, set up after their five-day war in early August.
Russia has until October 10 to pull the forces back.
But the Russian military said on Tuesday the unarmed civilian monitors would only be allowed as far as the edge of the security zones adjacent to Georgia's two breakaway, pro-Moscow regions -- South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"From tomorrow, representatives of the European Union will begin conducting monitoring up to the southern borders of the security zone," Vitaly Manushko, spokesman for Russian peacekeepers around South Ossetia.
The EU mission hopes to coordinate a "step-by-step" withdrawal of Russian forces and simultaneous return of Georgian police to the buffer zones to avoid a security vacuum that could be exploited by roaming militias.
Russian forces pushed deep into Georgian territory last month after a Georgian offensive to retake South Ossetia, in a war that shook Western confidence in the Caucasus as a transit route for oil and gas from the Caspian Sea.
The war damaged relations between Moscow and the West but drew no direct sanctions.
The Russian military and EU monitors said "technical talks" on the coordinated pullback and deployment were continuing.
A source in the Russian Defense Ministry said Russia was not hindering the deployment of the EU force. "This decision does not mean any ban on monitoring by the EU representatives in the buffer zone itself," the source said.
"But at this moment details of such monitoring have not been agreed, therefore the decision on when it will start will be taken later," he said.
The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, on a visit to Georgia to mark the start of the EU operation, said: "I think that we are going to try to begin tomorrow."
"We have to arrange with the commander of the Russian forces the manner in which this is going to be done. It's not going to be done in 24 hours," he told a news conference.
Georgia said Russia was trying to "prolong the process" but that the 10-day countdown to the withdrawal from undisputed Georgian territory would begin on Wednesday.
Russia says the monitors will not operate in South Ossetia or Abkhazia, which it recognized as independent states after the war and where it plans to station more than 7,000 troops.
The Kremlin says it intervened in August to prevent the killing of Ossetians in the Georgian assault, but the West complained its response was "disproportionate."
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