Georgian forces back in control of strategic road

Georgian troops are back in control of the country's main East-West highway after Russian forces pulled back, but Washington slammed the Kremlin over plans to keep a force in Georgia's heartland.

Russia says it will permanently station what it calls peacekeeping troops inside Georgia -- a step it says is to prevent new bloodshed and which the United States has branded a violation of a ceasefire deal.

However, Reuters reporters travelling on the main road linking the Georgian capital to the Black Sea coast saw no evidence early today of the checkpoints Moscow said it was already operating in buffer zones across the ex-Soviet state.

There was no Russian presence visible in Shavshebi, a settlement in central Georgia where Moscow had said its soldiers would stay on to man a checkpoint.

In Western Georgia, a Reuters cameraman saw a convoy of at least 150 Russian tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks leaving the military garrison town of Senaki, where Moscow had said it would keep a presence as part of its "security zone".

Moscow sent in troops this month after Georgia tried to retake its separatist South Ossetia region.

Russia crushed Georgian forces and pushed on further, crossing the main highway and moving close to a Western-backed oil pipeline. They also moved into Western Georgia from Abkhazia, a second breakaway region on the Black Sea.

Convoys of Russian tanks, armoured personnel carriers and soldiers left their positions yesterday and headed back into rebel-held territory -- a redeployment Russia said complied with a French-brokered ceasefire deal.

But Washington disagreed. "They have not completely withdrawn from areas considered undisputed territory and they need to do that," a White House spokesman said.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he was "deeply concerned" that Russian forces had not withdrawn to their positions before the outbreak of hostilities, as agreed.

Russian soldiers pulled out of the Georgian town of Gori, near South Ossetia, yesterday.

Early today, Georgian police were patrolling the streets and the grocery market had re-opened for the first time since the Russians took the town.

"It's my first day at the market," said 79-year-old blackberry seller Zaira. "I was so scared because bombs were falling on our homes. But now it seems people will start returning and everything will be alright," she said.

The continued presence of Russian troops in the buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia is an emotive issue for Georgians, who threw off Kremlin rule when Georgia won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

It also challenges the growing US influence in the region -- a major overland trade route between Europe and Asia and a transit corridor for oil and gas exports from the Caspian Sea that is favoured by the West because it bypasses Russia.

NATO has frozen contacts with Russia in a show of support for Georgia, an aspiring member of the military alliance. But despite angry rhetoric, Western states have avoided talk of specific sanctions against Moscow.

Russia's defence ministry said on Friday it had complied with the pullback set out in a ceasefire deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The pullout was carried out without any incidents and was completed according to plan at 5.50 p.m. (Malta time), the ministry said in a statement.

"Peacekeeping checkpoints in the security zone have started carrying out the tasks set before them. In this way, the Russian side has implemented the agreements set out (by the presidents of Russia and France)," it said.

Russia has denied any plans to annex Georgian territory, saying it only wants to protect South Ossetia and Abkhazia from a pro-Western Georgian leadership it accuses of dangerous aggression.

Most people in the two rebel regions hold Russian passports and do not want to be part of Georgia.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said in a report that a long-term presence of Russian troops would undermine Georgia's statehood.

"This should be strongly rejected by Western states as guaranteed to keep the dispute at boiling point, with negative ramifications for wider East-West relations," the report said.