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Medvedev signs peace accord

MOSCOW: Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a peace plan to end a five-day war with Georgia, but Russian forces are in no hurry to withdraw from the former Soviet republic.

Mr. Medvedev signed the plan on Saturday after receiving a fax copy signed by Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili following his talks U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Tbilisi on Friday. The plan calls for the withdrawal of Russian and Georgian forces to their pre-war positions, a pledge by Georgia to renounce the use of force, free access to humanitarian aid, and international talks on the status of Georgia’s breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Ceasefire has been largely holding since last Monday when Mr. Medvedev ordered a halt to Russia’s military operation in South Ossetia, but some Russian Army units that entered Georgia in search of heavy weapons and equipment are still plying Georgian roads unhampered by the local military or police.

Deputy Chief of the Russian Staff, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, told reporters on Saturday that Russians discovered a “huge arsenal of weapons” at a military base near the Georgian town of Gori abandoned by Georgian troops.

The military debacle has paralysed Georgia’s military and civilian authorities. The country’s 12,000-strong elite troops trained and armed by the U.S. have vanished into thin air. Even though hostilities on the ground were confined to South Ossetia, there is no sign of the Georgia’s Army or reservists called up by Mr. Saakashvili anywhere in Georgia.

Georgian soldiers told reporters they had removed their uniforms as they fled the fighting. “Government control has been disrupted at a national level in Georgia,” said General Nogovitsyn.

Military analysts said the Georgia’s war machine has been decimated. Russian forces have destroyed all of Georgia’s radars and anti-aircraft systems, most of its several dozen warplanes and helicopters and a large part of its 200-odd tanks.

“Even if Georgia gets massive military aid from the U.S. and NATO, it will take it years to rebuild a war-capable Army,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of a military think-tank, the Centre for Analysis and Technologies. Russia said it had lost 74 soldiers killed, 171 wounded and 19 missing. Georgia said 175 of its soldiers died, but Russian experts said its actual losses could be many times higher.

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