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Georgia welcomes news of EU-Russia agreement

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gave a qualified welcome yesterday to the news that Russia had agreed to pull its troops from all of Georgia except two separatist regions.

Saakashvili insisted that any long-term solution to the conflict had to respect his country’s territorial integrity — including the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to pull back from Georgia apart from the two breakaway regions, after talks on Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who led an EU delegation.

But Moscow’s recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was “irrevocable,” Medvedev said.

“We made a choice for ourselves,” Medvedev said. “This choice is final and irrevocable.”

During the talks in Russia, Sarkozy handed Medvedev a letter from Saakashvili promising not to use force again.

“Russia received a guarantee from the European Union and from France as representative of the European Union on non-use of force by the Georgian side,” Medvedev said.

There would be a “complete withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces” from zones adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia 10 days after the deployment of the EU observers, he said.

Under the deal brokered by Sarkozy, Medvedev agreed to the deployment of at least 200 EU observers in Georgia by Oct. 1 to monitor the pullout.

Sarkozy, the current EU president, said negotiations on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement — put on hold over the crisis — could resume “as early as October” if Moscow fulfilled the agreed measures.

But speaking later in Georgia he warned that if Russia failed to meet its commitment to a troop withdrawal, the EU would draw its own conclusions.

Washington stuck to its firm line, with US President George W. Bush taking a long-awaited decision to freeze a landmark civilian nuclear agreement with Russia in protest at Moscow’s military moves in Georgia.

“The president intends to notify Congress that he has today rescinded his prior determination regarding the US-Russia agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation,” a statement said.

Meanwhile, a French official said that Sarkozy threatened to walk out of the stormy talks with Russian officials before securing a deal with Medvedev on Monday.

“There were very tense moments,” a senior official in Sarkozy’s office told reporters after the deal was announced.

The original deal said both sides should withdraw to the positions they held before the brief war last month.

At one point in Monday’s talks, while Medvedev was not in the room, Russian officials tried to remove a reference to the Aug. 7 pre-conflict positions, the French official said.

“At that moment, Sarkozy got up and said ‘We’re going. This is not negotiable,’” the official said while traveling to Tbilisi after the Moscow leg of Sarkozy’s trip.

The Russian officials, who included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, had Medvedev called back into the room, and the row soon faded, the senior official said.

The second agreement reached on Monday retained a reference to the Aug. 7 deployment.

Sarkozy also warned Medvedev against the dangers of Russia’s decision last month to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

“Sarkozy told Medvedev: ‘Beware of the principle of self-determination. If the Russians demand it for Abkhazia and Ossetia, the Chechens could also demand it,’” the source said.
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