U.N. monitors leaving Georgia as OSCE deadline passes

By Matt Robinson

TBILISI (Reuters) - United Nations monitors began pulling out of Georgia Tuesday, testing security almost a year since the former Soviet republic's war with Russia.

A deadline for the OSCE to withdraw also passes Tuesday after negotiations with Russia broke down in May. The mission conducted its last patrol Friday, and has already left its hillside headquarters in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

Russia rejected extending the mandates of some 130 U.N. monitors in breakaway Abkhazia and 20 monitors of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who operated in rebel South Ossetia until last August's war.

Moscow recognized the territories as independent states after crushing a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in a five-day war. Russia demanded separate monitoring missions for the regions, which Georgia said would violate its sovereignty.

In Abkhazia Monday, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Edmond Mulet was quoted by Abkhaz media as saying military and police monitors would start leaving on Tuesday and complete the withdrawal by July 15, a month after Russia vetoed a new mandate.

A U.N. official who declined to be named confirmed around 20 monitors were leaving Tuesday. "We're moving them out in batches," he said. Full closure and the departure of several hundred civilian staff will take several more months.

The U.N. and OSCE missions deployed after Abkhazia and South Ossetia threw off Tbilisi's rule in wars in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Their departure leaves the European Union alone with some 225 unarmed monitors deployed after last year's war to monitor a fragile cease-fire.