Tbilisi/Moscow/Berlin - Russia will withdraw its troops from
buffer zones around the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia by October 10 to comply with international
agreements, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.
His comments were reported by the Interfax News Agency after a
meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero in St.
Petersburg.
Medvedev added that Moscow will work closely with European Union
observers, who started monitoring the ceasefire between Russia and
Georgia on Wednesday, six weeks after the conflict over Georgia's
breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
He brushed aside concerns about a new Cold War between Russia and
the West after the August hostilities in Georgia.
'There's no reason to think that. We don't have the kind of
ideological differences that could lead to a cold or other kind of
war,' he said.
Before Medvedev's comments, early morning negotiations with
Russian troops still in Georgia were necessary before the observers
were allowed to enter the buffer zone set up by Moscow forces around
South Ossetia, mission leader Hansjoerg Haber told Interfax.
The Russian military on Tuesday had said the unarmed observers,
who are travelling by car to observe the ceasefire, would not even be
allowed into the security zone.
Troops at Russian checkpoints on Wednesday morning initially
delayed a 20-man EU observer team from setting out into South
Ossetia, allowing the European vehicle convoy to advance only after
more discussions with Haber, a Russian army spokesman said.
A top goal of the EU mission is ensuing Georgian civilians driven
from the buffer zone after fighting erupted in early August will be
allowed to return to their villages, Haber said.
The 350 EU observers, most police officers, are in the region to
monitor the ceasefire and the promised withdrawal of Russian troops
from the buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
'I hope that this process (of Russian troop withdrawal from
Georgia) will be completed before October 10, as stipulated by the
ceasefire agreement,' said Javier Solana, the EU's senior diplomat,
during a Wednesday visit Georgia.
Resolution of the Russo-Georgian standoff has been a top EU
diplomatic priority since the end of the August war. French President
Nicolas Sarkozy was the chief engineer of the ceasefire agreement
ending fighting.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier were scheduled on Thursday to discuss implementation of
the ceasefire agreement, and other regional issues, with members of
the Russian cabinet in St Petersburg, the Interfax news agency
reported.
'We are for cooperation on the international level with all
actors. Russia will not let herself be drawn into a confrontation,'
claimed Vladimir Kotenov, Russia's ambassador to Germany, in an
interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Russia and Western nations led by the G8 nonetheless are sharply
at odds over the Kremlin's August recognition of the two renegade
Georgian provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states -
a move criticized in the West as a violation of international law.
Russian diplomats have repeatedly cited Western recognition of the
renegade Serbian province Kosovo as grounds legitimizing South
Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.
'It is important that the dialogue between Berlin and Moscow
continue. Only in that way can the results get any better,' said
Vladislav Belov, a political scientist from the Institute of Europe
at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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