GEORGIA: Russian peacekeeping troops enter the security zone outside Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia near the town of Zugdidi on Tuesday

Record ID: 349335

  • Title: GEORGIA: Russian peacekeeping troops enter the security zone outside Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia near the town of Zugdidi on Tuesday
  • Date: 13th August 2008
  • Summary: (BN14) ZUGDIDI REGION, GEORGIA (AUGUST 12, 2008) (REUTERS) RUSSIAN PEACEKEEPERS' CHECKPOINT SIGN "INGURI RIVER" BRIDGE ACROSS INGURI RIVER UNHCR (UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES) CARS DRIVING ACROSS BRIDGE PEOPLE WALKING ACROSS BRIDGE COLUMN OF APC'S WITH RUSSIAN PEACEKEEPERS DRIVING ACROSS BRIDGE PEOPLE RETURNING FROM ZUGDIDI REGION TO GALI REGION RUSSIAN AP
  • Embargoed: 28th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Georgia
  • Country: Georgia
  • Topics: War / Fighting,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA8NM44WLFQKKSIXL38P9VNB563
  • Story Text: Russian peacekeeping troops entered the Abkhaz security zone near the town of Zugdidi on Tuesday (August 12) . Their deployment was earlier negotiated with the local administration.
    Interfax news agency quoted the head of the Russian peacekeeping force in Abkhazia, Sergei Chaban, as saying the Russian forces were readying for an operation to disarm Georgian troops in the area.
    Column of APC's and military trucks carrying peacekeepers crossed into Zugdidi region.
    Later in the day journalists in the area were shown truck fully-loaded with confiscated guns.
    Peacekeepers reinforcement comes on the day when Georgia's separatist region of Abkhazia launched a military offensive to force Georgian troops out of the upper part of a disputed Kodori gorge.
    Lying nearly 200 km (120 miles) west of South Ossetia, the main war theatre of recent days, the Kodori Gorge is a disputed area near the boundary between Georgia proper and Abkhazia, which threw off Georgian control after a war in the early 1990s and declared independence.
    In Tbilisi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday (August 13) they had agreed to a modified version of a peace plan with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to military operations in Georgia on Tuesday in support of the international peace plan promoted by Sarkozy, who flew to Georgia after meeting Medvedev in Moscow.

    "It is a political document. It is an agreement of principles ...
    and I think we have full coincidence of principles," Saakashvili told a joint news conference with Sarkozy.
    The changes made had been approved by Medvedev and included removing a reference to talks on the future status of South Ossetia, the two men said.
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