Fragile Georgia-Russia peace holds after ceasefire

TBILISI - A fragile ceasefire in the Russia-Georgia conflict appeared to hold Wednesday, but Georgia's president accused Moscow of moving troops in violation of the truce.

No new clashes or bombing raids were reported after the two sides agreed a French-brokered peace plan on Tuesday and Moscow halted its military onslaught. Russia held a day of mourning for the dead from the conflict as EU foreign ministers discussed their response to Russia's action.

The fighting over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, which has left 100,000 people displaced according to UN estimates, had raised fears of a prolonged conflict between Moscow and the pro-Western ex-Soviet state.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told a news conference "Russian occupying forces are continuing movements across Georgia despite the ceasefire."

Russia warned that Russian forces would withdraw from Georgian territory only after Georgian troops have returned to their barracks.

"Upon the withdrawal of Georgian troops to their barracks, Russian troops will return to the territory of the Russian Federation," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a televised press conference.

The secretary of Georgia's national security council said 50 Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were still in the battered Georgian town of Gori north of Tbilisi.

"Fifty Russian tanks and APCs are in Gori. They (Russian soldiers) are not entering buildings," Alexander Lomaia told Georgian television.

In separate remarks, Lomaia told AFP a "convoy of Russian tanks had entered Gori," without specifying how many tanks were in the convoy or when the movement took place.

Russia denied having military forces in Gori. "Neither Russian peacekeepers nor any units subordinate to them are present in Gori," Russian news agencies quoted a military spokesman as saying.

But Lomaia also confirmed that Russian forces had completely left Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti where they arrived on Monday.

"There were no other movements of Russian forces overnight and no additional bombing," he added.

The ceasefire was agreed after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"There is a text. It has been accepted in Moscow, it was accepted here in Georgia. I have the agreement of all the protagonists," Sarkozy said at a news conference flanked by Saakashvili.

The six-point plan, which obliges the parties to halt fighting, was reviewed by EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner raised the possibility of sending European "monitors" to Georgia, but did not speak of a peacekeeping force.

Saakashvili insisted the deal does not compromise Georgia's territorial integrity, and a contentious reference in the plan to negotiations on the "future status" of breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia was changed to discussion on how to ensure "security and stability" there instead.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to Russia's military offensive against Georgia on Tuesday as Sarkozy arrived for talks to press his peace plan.

Medvedev declared that "the aggressor has been punished and suffered significant losses."

Russian troops and tanks poured into Georgia on Friday after the Georgian army launched an offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed region which broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990s.

There was considerable scepticism among Russian newspapers about whether the conflict was really over.

Even as Medvedev announced an end to the Russian operation "it immediately became clear that in fact the confrontation was hardly finished," wrote the daily Kommersant.

"It is too early to reach unequivocal conclusions about whether the agreement reached by Medvedev and Sarkozy will really put an end to military actions in South Ossetia," wrote the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.

"Saakashvili is characterised by his unpredictability and a lack of willingness to respect agreements," it added.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Russia that the United States "stands for the territorial integrity of Georgia" and backs its democratically elected government.

But the top priority was that "those military operations really do, now, need to stop because calm needs to be restored," she said in Washington.

The United States cancelled a joint naval exercise with Russia due to start this week as it considered a range of protest measures.

Georgia took Russia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for "alleged acts of ethnic cleansing" between 1993 and 2008, starting with the period when Russian peacekeepers entered Georgia's breakaway regions.

Russia claims the conflict has left more than 2,000 civilians dead, while the United Nations estimates some 100,000 people have been forced from their homes.

The Georgian health minister Tuesday put the death toll in Georgia at 175 people, mainly civilians. Russia said that 74 of its troops had been killed.