Russia, EU at odds over Georgia peace deal
Russia ruled out yesterday allowing EU observers into the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, contradicting claims by French President Nicolas Sarkozyy over the mission.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov threw into doubt the remit of the EU mission just two days after Sarkozy brokered the deployment of 200 observers to monitor a complete Russian withdrawal from Georgian territory outside the rebel regions.
"Additional international observers will be deployed precisely around South Ossetia and Abkhazia and not inside these republics," Lavrov told journalists in Moscow.
Sarkozy said Monday -- when he went to Moscow and Tbilisi to shore up the terms of a deal that halted last month's Russia-Georgia war -- that the observers would have wider powers.
"The spirit of the text is that they (the EU observers) will have a mandate to enter (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), to observe, to report," Sarkozy said in Tbilisi alongside Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
The latest deal requires Russia to withdraw all its troops from Georgia -- outside of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Moscow considers to be independent countries -- within 10 days of the EU deployment on October 1.
Experts say ambiguity over where the EU team might go has been the key weakness in the deal, with some saying the bloc could be accused of consolidating Russia's hold over the regions by not deploying there.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Wednesday that the location of the observers had not actually been discussed during talks, but that access to the rebel territories was clearly in the "spirit" of the agreements.
"This is something that was not discussed at that point in time," he told members of the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, in villages in western Georgia Russian soldiers are packing up to leave, rolling up barbed wire and removing equipment, but the process is anything but fast, residents said.
At this Russian checkpoint near the village of Khobi, about 30 from Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, a Georgian woman in a small shop said she had seen Russian soldiers preparing to leave.
"I saw them gathering up their things, removing poles and barbed wire," she said.
An AFP reporter saw no movement or signs that the Russian forces were leaving, but a Russian officer in charge of the checkpoint said some soldiers had left and preparations were underway for the full withdrawal from deep inside Georgia.
Asked when the pull-out would take place, the officer told AFP: "In a few days. Half of our equipment left yesterday. We were previously 24 and now we are 15. We will be gone by the expected date and are ready to leave more quickly if we are asked to."
"We received on Tuesday morning an order to begin preparing and gathering our things to leave," added the officer, who refused to give his name.
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