Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says his country's forces will pull out of most of Georgia by Friday.
In a telephone call with his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, Medvedev also said that 500 soldiers would be re-deployed as peacekeepers on both sides of South Ossetia's regional border in compliance with the French-brokered ceasefire. This came after NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the Western military alliance was temporarily freezing regular contacts with Moscow. De Hoop Scheffer was speaking following and emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, which was called to discuss how to respond to the crisis in Georgia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has responded by accusing NATO of pursuing anti-Moscow policies and supporting an aggressive Georgia. In a televised address, Lavrov insisted that Russia was not occupying Georgia and had no plans to annex the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
(Deutsche Welle)
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