Russian president says forces to leave buffer area

[October 08, 2008]  EVIAN, France (AP) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says that Russian peacekeeping forces will leave Georgia buffer zones around Abkhazia and South Ossetia by midnight Wednesday.

Medvedev praised the role of the European Union in the Georgia crisis at a conference in the French spa Evian on Wednesday.

Dozens of Russian armored personnel carriers, trucks and transport vehicles were rolled north on a main road leading through a buffer zone from Georgian-controlled territory into South Ossetia.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story is below.

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KARALETI, Georgia (AP) -- Russian forces pulled back from positions outside Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region, bulldozing a camp at a key checkpoint and withdrawing as European Union monitors followed. A Russian general said the pullout would be completed Wednesday.

Dozens of Russian armored personnel carriers, trucks and transport vehicles rolled north on a main road leading through a buffer zone from Georgian-controlled territory into South Ossetia. Georgian residents, frightened by arson and looting in the area blamed on Russia's Ossetian allies, lined the road to watch.

Moscow must withdraw its troops from buffer zones surrounding South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, by Friday under an agreement brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the wake of the August war between Russia and Georgia.

The pullback may ease tensions somewhat but will not resolve major disputes pitting Russia against Georgia and Western countries, which have condemned Moscow's invasion of the ex-Soviet republic and its recognition of the separatist regions as independent nations.

On Wednesday morning, a small base at the Russian checkpoint in Karaleti was almost completely dismantled, and two bulldozers leveled ground at the site. Two armored personnel carriers pulled out and headed toward South Ossetia shortly after the chief of Russian peacekeeping troops in the region said the withdrawal had begun.

Speaking at the Karaleti checkpoint, Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov said the withdrawal from all six posts on the edge of the buffer zone should be finished by day's end.

The APCs were followed by two blue light-armored vehicles from the EU mission monitoring the Russian pullout. They were joined by other Russian military vehicles, forming a loose column that headed toward South Ossetia. About a dozen Russian military vehicles crossed into the breakaway region about an hour later.

The concrete slabs that had served as a roadblock at Karaleti were removed Tuesday.

EU monitors have been patrolling the buffer zone since Oct. 1 under the withdrawal agreement, a supplement to the initial cease-fire Sarkozy brokered on behalf of the EU in August.

The governor of the Georgian region where Karaleti is located, Vladimir Vardezelashvili, said Georgian police would move into the buffer zone as the Russians withdraw. Black-uniformed police with Kalashnikovs stood by, closer to the checkpoint than they had in recent weeks.

The head of the EU monitoring mission, Hansjorg Haber, expressed satisfaction with the Russian moves to withdraw.

"We always proceeded from the assumption that the process would be completed by Friday, and this is confirmation of that assumption," Haber told The Associated Press by telephone, speaking from the buffer zone outside Abkhazia.

He said he expected Russian forces to withdraw from what he said were 12 checkpoints and a base outside Abkhazia by Friday, but probably not by Wednesday. He confirmed that Georgian law enforcement officers would move into the buffer zones as the Russians withdrew.

The war erupted when Georgian forces launched an attack targeting Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 in a bid to take control of the region, which broke away in a war during the early 1990s. Russian troops, tanks and warplanes swiftly repelled the attack and drove deep into Georgia in Moscow's first major military offensive beyond its borders since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Russian forces occupied large portions of Georgia for weeks after the war and reinforced positions around the edges of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia said it would keep nearly 8,000 troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- plans the U.S., EU and NATO say violate a cease-fire commitment to withdraw to pre-conflict positions.

The war broke out after years of increasing tension between Russia and Georgia, whose pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili has cultivated close ties with Washington and pushed to bring his nation into NATO.

Georgia straddles a key westward route for oil and gas from the Caspian Sea region.

[Associated Press]

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