Georgian troops pulled out of the disputed province of South Ossetia and agreed to a cease-fire Sunday

Europe

TBILISI, Georgia: Georgian troops pulled out of the disputed province of South Ossetia and agreed to a cease-fire Sunday, submitting to Russia's far superior firepower, as international envoys headed in to try to end fighting between Russia and its tiny U.S.-allied neighbor.

The retreat and the cease-fire came after Russia expanded its bombing Sunday, attacking the Georgian capital for the first time and driving Georgian troops out of South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, with heavy shelling.

A spokeswoman for the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Russia had violated Georgia's territorial integrity in South Ossetia and used excessive force.

The spokeswoman, Carmen Romero, said de Hoop Scheffer had urged Russia and Georgia to agree to an immediate cease-fire. He has called for talks to restore Georgian control over the breakaway province.

Romero said that de Hoop Scheffer was concerned about "the disproportionate use of force," an apparent reference to Russian shelling and air attacks on Georgian troops.

President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia issued a cease-fire order after the country's troops withdrew from the province, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.

"Georgia expresses its readiness to immediately start negotiations with the Russian federation on cease-fire and termination of hostilities," the ministry said in a statement, adding that it had notified Russia's envoy to Tbilisi.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had no immediate reaction to the Georgian statement.

Russia has demanded that Georgia pull its troops out of South Ossetia as a condition to negotiating a cease-fire. It urged Georgia to sign a pledge not to use force against South Ossetia as another condition for ending hostilities.

The Georgian authorities would not say to which positions the troops have been redeployed. The region is a patchwork of separatist- and government-controlled areas.

The moves came at the end of a weekend in which it appeared that Russia and Georgia were moving toward full-scale war. Russian soldiers poured into South Ossetia overnight and moved up to the border with Georgia.

The fighting sharply escalated over the weekend when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, and it had appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Russia landed ground troops off warships in the disputed territory of Abkhazia early Sunday and broadened its bombing campaign to the Tbilisi's airport.

Reports from the border between South Ossetia and Georgia suggested that Russian forces had moved all the way up to the disputed boundary line.

A top Russian defense official said Sunday that Russia had no immediate plans to move troops into Georgia.

"We don't intend to take the initiative to escalate the conflict at this time," Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said when asked if Russia intended to move troops into undisputed Georgian territory from Abkhazia or South Ossetia.

Still, a reporter in the border area saw artillery being fired from Russian-controlled areas into Georgian territory near the villages of Eredvy and Prisi, about three kilometers, or two miles, from Tskhinvali in South Ossetia. Grassy fields were burning in the villages and clouds of dirt rose with the impact of the shells.

Russian television also reported that Russia's 58th Army was at the southern border of South Ossetia.

A refugee who said he was fleeing Kakhvi, which he said was a Georgian-controlled enclave squeezed between parts of South Ossetia along the winding border, said that Russian forces were in the village. He said soldiers had come to his house and he had run away. Along the road, refugees carried their possessions in wheelbarrows and plastic bags toward the Georgian city of Gori.

The two sides may have different definitions of where the border with Georgia lies. The official borders of the administrative region of South Ossetia are larger than the area traditionally held by pro-Russian separatists, so if Russia occupied the whole administrative region it would be moving into areas normally held by Georgia.

An official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, Shota Utiashvili, said Sunday that Georgian troops had completely withdrawn from South Ossetia.

Georgian soldiers leaving the area said that they had been ordered early Sunday morning to leave Tskhinvali.

Sergeant Georgy Diakonoshvili, leaving South Ossetia with his Georgian tank crew, said the unit of 10 tanks had been exchanging fire with Russian tanks until it was ordered to withdraw at 1:30 a.m. One infantry soldier with Diakonoshvili's unit had been killed.

Near the border, Georgian soldiers were bewildered that they had been pushed out. Exhausted troops, their faces covered with stubble, said they were angry at the United States and the European Union for not coming to their aid.

Shortly before dawn Sunday, the Georgian Interior Ministry said Russian bombers had begun striking the airport at Tbilisi. The explosions could be heard in the city, Utiashvili said.

He said that Russia had built up large forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, breakaway regions that have support from Moscow, including as many as 300 artillery pieces in South Ossetia alone. Russian forces, he said, were also poised just over the border at Larsi, a checkpoint, where they could open a third line of ground attack.

"We are not at war with the Georgian state," said Nogovitsyn, the Russian defense official. But he added that Russia would send as many reinforcements as necessary to "the zone of conflict."

As Russia moved more forces into the region and continued aerial bombing, it appeared determined to occupy both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Saakashvili said Russia's ambitions were even more extensive. He declared that Georgia was in a state of war and said in an interview that Russia was planning to seize seaports and an oil pipeline and to overthrow his government.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border.

State-controlled news broadcasts showed Putin meeting generals, suggesting that he was directly in charge of military operations, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri Medvedev.

Putin said that dozens of people had been killed in South Ossetia and hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands were said to be fleeing. Georgia's health minister said that more than 80 people had been killed, including 40 civilians in airstrikes in Gori, a city north of Tbilisi.

Another Georgian official said at least 800 people, almost all of them civilians, had been wounded. Each side's figures were impossible to confirm independently, as was a claim released by South Ossetians and repeated by some Russian officials that 1,500 people had been killed in the territory.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/10/europe/georgia.php?page=1