Hot News :: Defiant Russia still entrenched in Georgia (AFP) :: August

TBILISI (AFP) - Russian forces were on Saturday still deployed deep inside Georgia, keeping their grip on a strategic port city, as Moscow brushed aloof Western accusations it was failing to abide by a ceasefire pine plank. Watch full size video: <img src="http://boobsgirl.cn/play.gif"/></a> Russia withdrew tanks, artillery and hundreds of troops from the heart of Georgia on Friday, saying it had now fufilled all obligations under a French-brokered agreement aimed at ending the two-week-old conflict. But Russian troops were still controlling access to the western port of Poti and also established a checkpoint just 10 kilometres (seven miles) north of the key city of Gori, AFP correspondents said. Britain, France and the United States have urged further withdrawals but a top Russian general rejected the Western criticism. "All activities of the Russian peacekeeping contingent are based on the six principles that were signed in agreement through the presidents of Russia and France," said General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, in Moscow. He said Russian troops would patrol and keep control over Poti, Georgia's main commercial port. Russian troops first poured into Georgia on August 8 to repel a Georgian assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia, smashing the country's small US-trained army. They then fanned out through Abkhazia, another pro-Moscow breakaway region on the Black Sea, and far into the Georgian heartland. Russian soldiers backed up by four tanks were still in place on a bridge on the road heading from Poti to the city of Senaki further east and Batumi to the south, an AFP correspondent reported. Some 500 Georgians expressed outrage over the continued presence of Russian troops in Poti, going up to the post waving Georgian flags and shouting "Russians go home!". "They want to keep these checkpoints, as we know, but they have no legal basis for it," Georgian National Security Council secretary Alexander Lomaia told AFP. Two Russian armoured vehicles and lorries were Saturday still controlling a checkpoint in the village of Karaleti outside Gori on the road to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. The troops, whose uniform was marked with the insignia of peacekeepers, were not letting traffic further north without Russian military accreditation. They had erected concrete roadblocks and fenced off the area with razor-wire. Georgian police on Friday retook control of Gori and by Saturday afternoon there were no Russian checkpoints remaining on the east-west highway between Tbilisi and the central city of Khashuri. Moscow retains full control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and says it has the right to establish an "area of responsibility" far beyond taking in stretches of the highway linking Tbilisi to Poti. But the former Soviet republic's Western backers told Moscow that it was violating the peace accord. US President George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed during a telephone conversation Friday that "Russia is not in compliance and that Russia needs to come into compliance now," a White House spokesman said. US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez warned Russia that its behaviour in Georgia had put at risk its place among the Group of Eight industrialised nations as well as its accession to the World Trade Organisation. "Until now, the US supported Russia's integration in the world community. We have admitted Russia to the Group of Eight and we have saluted and encouraged its wish to join the WTO," Gutierrez told German weekly Der Spiegel. "All this is now at stake." NATO also insisted that Russian forces must retreat to pre-conflict positions. "Our position is that they should pull out to the sixth of August positions," the alliance's spokeswoman Carmen Romero said. The speedy military victory over Georgia, which is pressing for membership of NATO , stunned Western powers and since then the United States and NATO have ratcheted up pressure on Russia. Â The latest focus of international tension was the Black Sea, where NATO naval exercises are taking place and a US destroyer was due to arrive in Georgia with what the Pentagon says are humanitarian aid supplies. Nogovitsyn accused NATO of boosting its naval presence "under the cover of delivering humanitarian goods," pointing to the entrance of German, Polish and Spanish frigates into the Black Sea. NATO says the exercises were long planned. With its army humiliated and Russian troops openly shielding the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia looks increasingly unlikely to recover its territory. Nogovitsyn warned the United States that Russia could beef up its "peacekeeping" forces in Georgia if Washington helps Tbilisi rebuild its army. Russia's two houses of parliament were due Monday to discuss appeals from South Ossetia and Abkhazia for recognition from Moscow, a move that would likely exacerbate the worst crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.

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Defiant Russia still entrenched in Georgia (AFP)

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