Russia inks cease-fire but doesn't back pullout

Troops to stay in Georgia as long as needed

Georgians lined up for a humanitarian food distribution yesterday in Gori, where many residents haven't had access to much food since the conflict with Russia broke out a week ago. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

MOSCOW - Russia's president, Dmitry A. Medvedev, signed a revised framework for a deal to halt the fighting in neighboring Georgia yesterday, but the Kremlin indicated that it would not immediately pull its troops from the country.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, said his country's forces would stay in Georgia as long as they were needed. He said their withdrawal would depend on the introduction of what he called additional security measures, without explaining what those were.

"The basic agreements do not determine the ceiling for the peacekeeping contingents," Lavrov said. "How long it will take, I have already emphasized that it depends not only on us. We are constantly facing problems created by the Georgian side. Everything depends on how fast and efficiently these problems will be solved."

Georgia's Foreign Ministry said yesterday that Russian-backed separatists from Abkhazia Province had taken over 13 Georgian villages and a power plant, the Associated Press reported.

Russian Army units and separatist militants shifted the border of the breakaway region of Abkhazia toward the Inguri River, setting up temporary administration in 13 villages and putting the Inguri hydropower plant under separatist control, a Foreign Ministry statement said. Abkhaz officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the late-night report.

Most of the villages and plant are in a buffer zone established by a 1994 UN cease-fire resolution that ended a war over the province and left it with de facto independence. The renewed military action in Abkhazia came alongside the fighting in another breakaway province, South Ossetia, that has pit Russian and Georgian forces against each other since Aug. 7.

Speaking at his ranch in Texas, President Bush described the Russian endorsement of the cease-fire as a hopeful step. "Now Russia needs to honor the agreement and withdraw its forces," Bush said.

The Russian announcements yesterday came a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Georgia to demand a Russian withdrawal and win the Georgian president's support for the revised cease-fire agreement. As Rice was arriving in the capital, Tbilisi, Russian troops moved to within 25 miles of there.

But yesterday, Russian troops remained within that distance. And overall, the situation in Georgia was largely unchanged, with the Russians occupying wide swaths of territory.

A railway bridge at Kaspi, east of Gori, was destroyed after explosives were apparently placed under its spans. Georgia contended that the Russians were trying to undermine Georgia's economy by destroying civilian infrastructure.

General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a senior Russian defense official, said his country played no role in the damage. "We are now in peacetime," he said. "Why should we be blowing up bridges when our job is to restore? We are hard at work."

Throughout yesterday, the Russian Army continued operations in Georgia that suggested that a pullout was not imminent.

If Russian troops do not begin withdrawing over the weekend, the standoff is likely to touch off more strains between Russia and the United States. Bush has repeatedly castigated Russia in recent days for invading Georgia after intense fighting broke out over South Ossetia, which is an ally of Moscow and wants to secede formally from Georgia.

The Kremlin has said that Georgia provoked the conflict by sending its troops into South Ossetia, and referred to the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, as a war criminal.

Saakashvili has contended that Russia is determined to turn Georgia into the kind of vassal state that existed in the region during Soviet times.

It remained an open question yesterday whether a dispute remained over the interpretation of the precise language of the cease-fire framework.

The original arrangement was negotiated by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. But after Georgia raised objections about one provision, he altered it so that it could not be used by the Russians to justify maintaining a military presence deep in Georgia.

Saakashvili signed the revised version Friday, and even as the Kremlin announced yesterday that Medvedev had signed as well, it did not explicitly say that he had approved the changes by Sarkozy.

Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, raised a new issue, saying the document that Saakashvili approved Friday had not contained an introduction that had been endorsed by Russia, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.

Lavrov said the introduction declared that the cease-fire framework was supported by the presidents of Russia and France, which urged other parties to sign it. Still, whatever the clash over the wording, it appears that the Kremlin could still try to cite overall security concerns to forestall a withdrawal.

Neither side seems eager to compromise. At a news conference Friday, Medvedev accused Saakashvili of embracing "idiotic ideas" that had provoked the war, while Saakashvili referred to the Russians as "21st-century barbarians."

Tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia have long simmered, and Russia has increasingly supported the breakaway regions' desire to secede, even giving their residents Russian passports. With the Russians contending that Saakashvili began the fighting, they have made clear in recent days that Georgia can never again claim the regions.

The United States, though, has emphasized that Georgia's territorial integrity must be preserved. "There's no room for debate on this matter," Bush said yesterday.

Large numbers of Russian armored troops continued to occupy the central city of Gori yesterday, where they were seen by reporters and photographers for The New York Times. Some units have moved out of the city and begun to dig artillery and fighting positions in villages to its east, nearer to Tbilisi.

The troops were in Gori despite assertions to the contrary earlier in the day by Nogovitsyn. He said at a news conference that there were no troops left in Gori, which is astride Georgia's main highway. He also said units that had been there were only reconnaissance troops.

At least three Mi-24 helicopter gunships, one of the most feared weapons in Russia's conventional arsenal, patrolled the skies to Gori's east. They were not seen firing, but Georgia said elsewhere that their ordnance had set the national forest near Borjomi afire and that a highway bridge was damaged. The claims could not be verified.