US demands Russia withdraws from Georgia immediately

The US demanded yesterday that Russian troops end their occupation of Georgia immediately after Georgia signed a ceasefire agreement.

Speaking alongside Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice evoked the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago to crush liberal reforms: "Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once. This is no longer 1968".

Mr Saakashvili said, following five hours of talks with Dr Rice, he had inked the ceasefire pact, negotiated by France on behalf of the EU.

As they were speaking, a Reuters correspondent witnessed a column of up to 17 Russian armoured personnel carriers advancing along the main highway to within 55 kilometres of the Georgian capital, their deepest move yet inside Georgia.

The purpose of the incursion was not immediately clear. Mr Saakashvili, in passionate remarks, denounced Russians as "21st century barbarians" and blamed the West for triggering the crisis by failing to react firmly to Moscow's previous military moves and not admitting Georgia to Nato fast enough.

"Our most urgent task today is the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia," Dr Rice told reporters after talks with the Georgian President.

Moscow and Washington have been trading barbs over Georgia, an ally of the US aspiring to join Nato, after Russian troops routed Georgian forces which had tried to take control of a Georgian separatist region backed by Moscow.

Russian units then went into several towns in Georgia proper, provoking the ire of Washington, with top US officials invoking memories of the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

"The Russian attack on Georgia had profound implications and will have profound implications for its relations with its neighbours and the world," she said.

Ominously for Moscow, its biggest trading partner Germany was scarcely less critical. German President Angela Merkel said after meeting President Medvedev that Russia's response had been excessive.

She called on the Kremlin to pull its forces out of central Georgia and implement a French-led peace plan.

"We very much want the six-point plan to be implemented very promptly so that Russian troops are no longer in Georgia, outside Abkahzia and South Ossetia," she told a news conference.

Moscow mounted its biggest show of military force outside its borders since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union after Georgia last Thursday tried to seize back control of its rebel province of South Ossetia.

The conflict has rattled oil markets because a key pipeline runs through Georgia and has unnerved the West, which fears the conflict could easily escalate in the volatile region.

Georgia has been calling for the Russian troops to pull back from Gori, alleging that militias from over the border in the North Caucasus have moved in behind them and are looting and burning Georgian villages north of the town.