(4)
TBILISI–Russian troops and tanks were still deployed in several areas of Georgia today, apparently defying pressure from the West to withdraw quickly.
Armed Georgian police officers and Russian soldiers guarded separate checkpoints only a few hundred metres apart in the village of Igoeti in central Georgia.
Russia's defence ministry said yesterday the army's withdrawal from the combat zone in Georgia had started, but reporters saw no evidence the Russians were getting out in a hurry.
In fact, yesterday, rather than retreat, Russian tanks and troops were seen driving the opposite direction, from Gori – where they had been seen driving around freely – to Igoeti, only 45 kilometres from the capital.
Other Russian troops, in the western town of Senaki, appeared to blow up the runway at a military base yesterday.
Russian tanks rumbled into South Ossetia on Aug. 8 after Georgian forces tried to recapture the region, which broke free from Tbilisi in a war during the 1990s. Russia launched an overwhelming counterattack to support the separatists.
The Russian attack – its biggest military deployment outside its borders since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union – included air strikes on economic targets deep inside Georgia, forcing the Georgian army into retreat and shocking the West.
The United States and France yesterday urged a speedy Russian withdrawal in line with a French-mediated ceasefire accord that committed the Georgians and Russians to pull back to positions they held before fighting broke out.
Pressure from the West has had no visible impact as Moscow has declined to set a pullout timetable.
Georgia accused Russia of actually broadening its presence.
"I hope the world has woken up to what is going on. The Russians should get out of my country," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told reporters during a Tbilisi church service last night. "The worst thing the world could do would be to compromise and show weakness."
NATO foreign ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss the crisis today.
The ministers are to consider sending a message to Russia by excluding it from some coming activities including military exercises and diplomatic meetings.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her way to the emergency NATO meeting yesterday, said Russia is playing a "very dangerous game and perhaps one the Russians want to reconsider."
She said the United States and its allies would not allow Russia to draw a "new line" through Europe and intimidate former Soviet republics and former satellite states.
In Moscow, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, told a briefing that "today, according to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun," and he said forces were leaving Gori.
But what reporters saw on the ground was far different – Russian soldiers moving freely, sometimes deeper into Georgia, and in some cases apparently goading their Georgian counterparts.
Four armoured Russian personnel carriers, each with about 15 troops, drove from Gori to Igoeti. Once there, as the hulking trucks drove past a group of Georgian soldiers and police officers, one swerved and scraped a new Georgian police car. The Georgians just looked down.
Georgia's Rustavi-2 television showed footage of a Russian armoured vehicle smashing through a group of Georgian police cars barricading the road to Gori yesterday.
It dragged one of the cars along the street. Georgian police stood by without even raising their guns as the Russian vehicle crushed the roadblock.
The RIA-Novosti news agency reported that the leader of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, asked Russia yesterday to establish a permanent base there.
Some analysts think Russia may drag its feet in pulling out its troops to keep economic and social pressure on Saakashvili and on his government, which they want to dislodge.
"The Russians will invent all kinds of excuses, pretexts not to pull back their troops," said Alexander Rondeli of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies said.
"They will rename themselves peacekeepers, maintain their positions in the security zone."
Meanwhile, New Jersey Congressman Christopher Smith was expected to land in Georgia today in a bid to free two visiting American girls who have been unable to leave their grandparents' home because Russian checkpoints have blocked their path to escape the conflict.
Joseph Evans and his Georgian-born wife, Tea-h, have been trying from the U.S. to bring daughters Ashley, 7, and Sophia, 3, back to their home in Howell, N.J.
Mary McDermott Noonan, a Smith spokesperson, said he will "push every conceivable option" to get the girls and other American children out of Georgia.
With files from Associated Press
