GEORGIA:RUSSIA AND the West accused each other yesterday of trying to change the terms of ceasefire agreements in Georgia, as Moscow's troops started dismantling checkpoints around the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Daniel McLaughlinreports
Russia rejected an EU assertion that monitors bound for Georgia would have the right to patrol inside the breakaway regions, while Washington lambasted Russia for planning to base about 7,500 troops in the two provinces, which the Kremlin has recognised as independent states.
French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU presidency, agreed the monitoring deal in Moscow on Monday, after which he flew to Tbilisi and told Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili that the EU "stands ready to deploy monitors in the whole of Georgian territory".
"This is a completely unscrupulous attempt to not honestly explain to Saakashvili what commitments the EU took upon itself, and what commitments Russia undertook, but to be led on a string by Mr Saakashvili," said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. "Additional international observers will be deployed precisely around South Ossetia and Abkhazia - and not inside these republics."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, said the mission of at least 200 monitors "will be deployed with the spirit that it can deploy everywhere", but admitted that access to South Ossetia and Abkhazia was not discussed at Monday's talks.
As Russian soldiers and armour began to slowly pull back from buffer zones around the two rebel regions, Tbilisi accused Moscow's troops of shooting dead a Georgian policeman at a checkpoint near South Ossetia.
Russia denied responsibility, and suggested Georgia and its western allies were stoking tension ahead of a visit to Tbilisi on Monday by Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
"We believe that the tough position of the so-called West in support of Georgia's territorial integrity in fact continues to provoke the Georgian leadership into further use of force," said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament.
Russia has accused Washington of provoking last month's conflict over South Ossetia, with prime minister Vladimir Putin suggesting Republican officials sought to spark war to boost the presidential election chances of their party's candidate, John McCain, who is seen as more experienced, and more hawkish, than Democratic rival Barack Obama.
US state department spokesman Seán McCormack said yesterday that Russia's plan to station about 3,600 soldiers in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia was a clear violation not only of previous accords but the ceasefire too.
He insisted that Russia and Georgia had pledged to return to preconflict positions, when Moscow had about 1,000 troops in each region under the terms of a peacekeeping mandate dating back to the early 1990s during which the provinces fought brief wars with Tbilisi. "These guys at every turn are trying to wriggle out of every commitment they made," Mr McCormack said of Russia.