Russians 'violating truce'
2008-08-13 14:26
Tbilisi - Georgian officials charged on Wednesday that dozens of Russian tanks had rolled into a strategic city and seized a military base inside Georgia, violating an EU-brokered truce designed to end a six-day conflict that has battered a US ally and uprooted an estimated 100 000 people.
Russia immediately denied the report of tanks, but did admit that some Russian soldiers went into the Georgian city of Gori.
The accusation came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia.
The EU peace plan's concept of having both sides retreat to their original positions was running into the stark reality of Russian dominance on the battlefield. In addition to Russian forces entering Gori, Georgia also lost its last stronghold in another separatist province, Abkhazia.
About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning, according to a top Georgian official, Alexander Lomaia. The city of 50 000 sits on Georgia's only significant east-west road about 15 miles south of South Ossetia, a separatist province where much of the fighting has taken place.
'No tanks in Gori'
Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn said on Wednesday that no tanks were in Gori. He said Russians went into the city to try to implement the truce with local Georgian officials but could not find any.
An APTN television crew in Gori saw some Russian armoured vehicles on Wednesday morning near a military base there. Puffs of smoke in the air indicated some military action.
An AP photographer saw several Russian troops and two armoured vehicles on the northern outskirts of the city. His driver went further up the road and ran into Russian military volunteers, who warned him that Russian forces would soon shell Gori. The two retreated south but no immediate shelling could be heard.
Nogovitsyn said sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Georgian snipers fired sporadically on Russian troops who returned fire. "We must respond to provocations," he said.
Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev insisted on Tuesday they would stay.
In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged on Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia which they had controlled - a development that leaves the entire area in the hands of the Russian-backed separatists.
Georgia insisted its troops had been driven out by Russian forces. At first, Russia said that separatists had done the job, not Russian forces. But the claim rang hollow - an AP reporter saw 135 Russian military vehicles heading toward the gorge Tuesday and Russia is the separatists' military patron.
- AP