Russian troops halt advance

TBILISI - Russian forces have halted their advance on Georgian territory but are not withdrawing, Georgia's Reintegration Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Tuesday in televised comments.

"The Russians have halted their advance. There is no movement of Russian forces, but they are staying at their occupied positions," he said.

"The ceasefire agreement is yet to be signed ... the Medvedev statement could mean that hopefully they will not fire at us anymore," he added.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday he had ordered a halt to the military offensive against Georgia after the army staged new strikes against its neighbour.

"I have taken the decision to end the operation to force Georgian authorities into peace," Medvedev was quoted as saying at a meeting with defence officials on the conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia.

"The purpose of the operation has been achieved.... The security of our peacekeeping forces and the civilian population has been restored," Interfax news agency quoted the president as saying.

"The aggressor has been punished and suffered significant losses," he said.

Medvedev qualified the ending of hostilities, saying that in the event of new Georgian attacks in the rebel region of South Ossetia , such threats should be "liquidated."

A senior Russian military commander also said that while a ceasefire by the forces and a halt in their advance into Georgia did not mean that all operations would be scrapped.

"If we have received the order to cease fire, this does not mean that we have stopped all actions, including reconnaissance," General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said at a briefing.

Medvedev's order was announced just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Moscow for talks aimed at ending the conflict in Georgia, centred on South Ossetia.

France, which currently holds the European Union presidency, has pushed a three-point peace plan aimed at returning the situation in Georgia to what it was before hostilities broke out late last week.

Meanwhile on the ground, Georgian authorities said Russia's air force had again attempted to bomb a strategic oil pipeline, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, which connects the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean via Georgia.

There was no immediate word on whether the pipeline had been damaged. Georgian authorities said Sunday that Russia had tried to hit the pipeline but missed, while Russia denied trying to target it.