EU cease-fire monitors will not enter a Russian-declared "security zone" in Georgia as early as originally planned, officials said today, prompting Georgia to accuse Moscow of stalling a promised troop pullback.
Russia said it was not blocking the European Union monitors, but the delay highlighted loopholes in a French-brokered cease-fire deal that some observers warn could lead to fresh flare-ups between Russia and Georgia.
After crushing Georgian forces in a brief war last month, Russia established buffer zones on Georgian territory adjoining South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two rebel, pro-Russian regions of Georgia that Moscow has now recognised as independent states.
Under the pullback deal brokered by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, the troops should withdraw from the zones by October 10th, after the deployment of EU monitors which had been scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
But the Russian military said a technical agreement on access for the monitors to the zone adjacent to South Ossetia had not yet been finalised.
"From tomorrow, representatives of the European Union will begin conducting monitoring up to the southern borders of the security zone," Vitaly Manushko, spokesman for Russian peacekeepers around South Ossetia.
A source in the Russian Defence Ministry denied Russia was hindering the deployment of the EU force. "This decision does not mean any ban on monitoring by the EU representatives in the buffer zone itself," the source said.
"But at this moment details of such monitoring have not been agreed, therefore the decision on when it will start will be taken later," he said.
Reuters