Russian forces said they started withdrawing from Georgia yesterday, but insisted they would keep hundreds of troops inside a buffer zone in the neighboring republic.
While the UN again failed to agree a resolution on the conflict, foreign correspondents saw soldiers on the move across Georgia, swathes of which have been under Russian occupation for the last two weeks.
Tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks could be seen traveling around Gori, an ethnic Georgian town under Russian control near South Ossetia, where the conflict erupted.
“They are going, but extremely slowly,” said Vova Djugali, police chief at the nearby ethnic Georgian village of Igoeti.
“I don’t think it [the withdrawal] will be today. I think it will be tomorrow around midday and then I can send in my police forces,” he said.
In the west of the country, troops left a barracks in Poti, a key oil port, a reporter said. However they were dug in at a checkpoint between the towns of Senaki and Zugdidi and also between Poti and Senaki.
General John Craddock, the US officer who is NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, who is visiting Tbilisi, said Russia’s withdrawal was “at a snail’s pace. It is far too little and far too slow.”
The announced withdrawal came two weeks after tanks and troops poured into South Ossetia to repel an attempt by Georgia’s army to regain control of the breakaway region.
Humanitarian aid is getting in to the beleaguered Georgian city of Gori, but Russia needs to open corridors to allow assessment teams and more supplies to get through, the head of USAID said yesterday.
Henrietta Holsman Fore, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said NGOs had managed to get into the city on Thursday to hand out supplies that had been brought in to the country by her agency and the US military.
“The distribution of food and hygiene kits went well — that is just one day, but it’s a step in the right direction,” she said.
Still, she said USAID’s people needed to be allowed into the Russian-held area to increase the supplies, and also get a picture of what the people need.
“We’ve been calling on the Russians for access,” she said, adding that they had not yet received a reply.
“It is extremely important for humanitarian assistance and assessment teams to be able to get through — if they can get through, they can save lives,” she said.
The UN says 158,000 Georgians have been displaced since fighting with Russia began on Aug. 7 over Georgia’s separatist province of South Ossetia.
About 80,000 displaced people are being housed in more than 600 centers in and around the capital, Tbilisi.
To date, more than US$11 million in aid has been flown into Georgia, Fore said. Supplies include prepared meals, blankets, cots, mattresses and even portable showers.
Fore said the focus right now is on bringing in the supplies needed for the short-term, but that later the US would be focusing on reconstruction and helping rebuild the damaged Georgian infrastructure.
“We intend to be here by your side for many years to come,” she told a Georgian reporter.
Fore was on a two-day trip to Georgia with the head of US European Command, US General John Craddock, who is also NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe.
The general talked with US flight crews and USAID workers at the Tbilisi airport, where the aid has been coming in on regular flights.
One issue brought up by USAID personnel on the ground was that they did not know exactly what supplies were being brought in on which planes — making distribution more difficult to coordinate.
Craddock said he would make sure the problem was sorted out.
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