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Troop pull-out from today: Russia

MOSCOW: Russia will start pulling out its forces from Georgia’s breakaway territory of South Ossetia on Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev told France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The two leaders discussed implementation of the ceasefire agreement that Mr. Sarkozy helped negotiate last Tuesday. Russia signed the deal on Saturday, after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice obtained the signature of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

The conflict broke out on August 7, when Georgia attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to return the separatist region into its fold. Russia promptly sent in troops, routed the Georgian Army and destroyed much of Georgia’s military infrastructure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview that the five-day conflict may go down in history as “one of the shortest wars ever waged” and the France-brokered peace “the fastest ceasefire ever achieved.”

Russian troops in Georgia on Sunday took control of a hydroelectric power station in Western Georgia that provides electricity to parts of Abkhazia, the other separatist region of Georgia. The step, taken “to prevent acts of sabotage,” followed Georgian claims, hotly denied in Moscow, that Russian forces still deployed in Georgia had blown up a railway bridge and set forests on fire.

Despite mutual accusations, peace has been holding in the region and the battle now moves on to the U.N. The Security Council is expected to consider on Monday a French draft resolution on the crisis that calls for international observers to be sent to the conflict zone as soon as possible to monitor the ceasefire. The West also wants international peacekeepers to replace Russian troops stationed in the region since early 1990s under a U.N.-monitored mandate from the Commonwealth of Independent States. However, Russia said its peacekeepers would remain in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

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