France says Russia partly meets Georgia ceasefire deal

By Margarita Antidze

GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russia has partly complied with a cease-fire deal requiring it to pull back its forces in Georgia, France's foreign minister said on a visit on Friday to verify the pullback on behalf of the European Union.

Russian soldiers and tanks pushed into zones around the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during a war in August. On Friday a deadline for them to leave, which was set out in a French-brokered cease-fire deal, expired.

Asked in the Georgian town of Gori, near South Ossetia, if Russia had honoured the cease-fire deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters: "I think so, but partly."

EU foreign ministers could decide next week whether to restart talks on a strategic partnership treaty with Russia that the 27-member bloc put on hold until it is satisfied Russia has complied with the cease-fire deal.

But diplomats in Brussels said there were differences inside the EU over the kind of signal that would be sent to Russia if the talks were resumed right away.

Russian troops and armoured personnel carriers left their checkpoints in the Russian-declared buffer zones this week and Moscow says it is now in full compliance with the cease-fire.

But pro-Western Georgia says the Kremlin has not honoured the cease-fire because Russian troops remain in the two breakaway regions, which threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s, and in particular in small pockets of those regions that Tbilisi says it controlled until the war this year.

DISPUTED LAND