Moscow (CNSNews.com) – Russia Tuesday announced an end to military operations against Georgia and the Georgian government said it had agreed to a modified version of a European Union-mediated peace plan.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy took the draft plan to Tbilisi after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, aimed at resolving the conflict.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili agreed after the plan was amended to remove a reference to talks on the “future status” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Georgia at the center of the Russia-Georgia dispute.
Instead, the plan refers to international talks on ways to restore “security and stability” to the two provinces, Sarkozy said at a joint news conference with Saakashvili in Tbilisi early Wednesday. The change had been approved by the Russian president, they said.
A key point of potential dispute will be the status and future of peacekeeping forces in the two provinces.
Medvedev said Russian peacekeepers would remain, but Saakashvili voiced the hope that Russian forces would eventually be replaced by international ones.
The Russian forces are in the areas under a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) mandate, but Saakashvili in a speech to supporters Tuesday night announced that Georgia would withdraw from the Russian-led grouping of former Soviet republics.
Russia said it sent in tanks and troops to bolster its peacekeepers and protect Russian citizens in South Ossetia after Georgian forces mounted an offensive late last week against the separatists.
Its critics say that by becoming too close to the separatist leaders, invading disputed territory and mounting attacks on Georgian territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia had forfeited its peacekeeping right by becoming a party to the conflict.
Amid hopes of a resolution, rhetoric continued to fly in both directions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that Russia had no confidence at all in Saakashvili, who he said should have left office.
Georgian officials announced they would take Russia before the International Court of Justice for “alleged acts of ethnic cleansing” in the breakaway regions between 1993 and 2008.
During the crisis, both sides sought to spread differing versions of events, Russia describing its action as a legitimate response to Georgia’s incursion into South Ossetia, and Georgia lashing out at “Russian aggression.”
Civilians continue to count the cost, with refugee agencies saying nearly 100,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. Reported death toll estimates remain unconfirmed. Russia claimed more than 2,000 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia, while the Georgian government said 175 people, mostly civilians, had died in Georgia.
Georgia, along with Ukraine, earlier this year sought the begin the lengthy process of joining NATO, but a summit of the alliance was divided over the matter and the step was not taken.
Some Georgian government officials have claimed that that decision gave Russia a green light to attack.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Tuesday reiterated that Georgia would one day become a member of the alliance, a position upheld by NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels.
However, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev argued that Georgia’s military action in South Ossetia had been provoked by Western support.
“Promises of NATO membership served to strengthen Georgian arrogance,” he said in an interview published Wednesday.
(CNSNews International Editor Patrick Goodenough contributed to this report.)