VERKHNY ZARAMAG // A Russian military column crossed from Georgia back into Russia today after Western governments raised pressure for a quick and full pullout under an international ceasefire deal. A dozen lorries crossed the frontier near the Roki tunnel that links Russia with Georgia's pro-Russian rebel province of South Ossetia at around midday. There was no sign of armoured vehicles, a correspondent on location said.
Western powers, working through the United Nations and Nato have raised pressure on the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to speed a promised pullout after two weeks of violent confrontation. Impatience is turning to scepticism. "Three times Medvedev has said they are starting the withdrawal and they have not," the French foreign finister Bernard Kouchner was quoted in the International Herald Tribune newspaper as saying. "We cannot accept this kind of blindness, not accepting international law."
At the UN, Western powers pushed for a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate Russian withdrawal from Georgia, but veto-holding Russia declined to back it. A draft text referred to "the territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognised borders." Russia argues that phrasing implies the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia, at the centre of the conflict, should be reintegrated into Georgia proper.
Russia says this is a remote prospect after the bloodshed of the last two weeks. Near the village of Igoeti, the closest Russian checkpoint to the capital Tbilisi, Russian troops wearing helmets with the sky-blue bands of peacekeepers were digging into foxholes at the side of the road. There was no sign of Russian convoys on the move there, some 45km from the capital. The crisis erupted on Aug 7 when Georgia tried to recapture South Ossetia, which broke with Tbilisi in 1992. Russian forces hit back, thrusting beyond the region into the Georgian heartland, overrunning the army in fierce fighting. * Reuters
