Russian troops withdraw from Georgia
Dispute over two breakaway areas unsettled

MOSCOW - Russian troops dismantled checkpoints and decamped from Georgia proper yesterday, abandoning a two-month occupation of broad swaths of the former Soviet republic and pushing the conflict to a new status quo.

The withdrawal brings a measure of relief but sheds little light on the bitter dispute over the future of Georgia's two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia plans to leave thousands of troops stationed in the rebel regions, which Moscow has recognized as independent states and endowed with Russian passports for residents. Georgia, meanwhile, still aspires to bring the lands back under the control of its central government.

Georgia and the West contend that Russia's plans to leave its enlarged forces in the rebel regions, where it has long maintained peacekeeping forces, violate a French-brokered cease-fire deal. With tensions high, several unsolved bombings have erupted in the breakaway regions.

Yesterday Russia and Georgia were bickering over whether the troops had fully withdrawn.

The move was incomplete because Russian soldiers had not relinquished their grip on the disputed town of Akhalgori, said Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia's national security council. Moscow considers Akhalgori part of South Ossetia.

"All we expect them to do is to quietly withdraw from regions [where] they have never been before, and regions that have never been under any control but the Georgian government's," Lomaia said in a telephone interview. "Unless they withdraw . . . we are not able to concede that they have met the Oct. 10 deadline" set by the cease-fire accord.

Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the Russian withdrawal was a positive move, but he added that Georgia would not consider it complete until the troops leave Akhalgori, as well as the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia.

"We think that it's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't mean yet that the withdrawal is fulfilled," Utiashvili said.

Moscow considers the Kodori Gorge part of Abkhazia, a claim that Georgia rejects.

Russian officials made it plain yesterday that, in their view, the withdrawal was finished. General Marat Kulakhmetov, who is in charge of Russian troops near South Ossetia, said the pullout had been fully completed, according to Russian news reports.

Earlier yesterday, President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia's pullout from areas outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be completed by midnight.

"It is now important to calm down and at least to give up the confrontational rhetoric," Medvedev said at a conference in Paris. "Nothing fatal or irreparable has happened. A new edition of the Cold War is not threatening us."

A European Union monitoring commission would not confirm that Russia had withdrawn from all of Georgia proper. But the panel's head, Hansjorg Haber, called the Russian pullout a positive development."

In Washington, the State Department also welcomed Russia's moves but said it was watching to see whether it completed the withdrawals by the deadline.

Under the French-brokered deal, Russian forces have until tomorrow to abandon posts on land seized during the summer war. The soldiers had been controlling a rural run of villages and farmlands following a five-day conflict in August that cranked up tensions by pitting US-backed Georgia against Russia.

The conflict began on Aug. 7, when Georgia launched an operation to bring South Ossetia to heel. Russia intervened with a punishing land and air assault. At the height of the offensive, Russian troops sent tanks well into Georgia proper to within 25 miles of Tbilisi, the capital.

The Russian soldiers later pulled back but kept a tight grip on the "security zone" abutting South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have been largely autonomous since the early 1990s.

Russia went on to recognize the independence of the breakaway republics.

Georgia is expected to demand that Russia leave the breakaway republics during a European Union-sponsored conference in Geneva next week.

But Moscow is unlikely to comply.