Turk PM meets Medvedev, as concerns mount over ceasefire

"We saw a Russian column including tanks, APCs and military trucks 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside of Gori heading in the direction of Tbilisi," an AFP journalist said.  Â

However Russia denied on Wednesday media reports that a convoy of Russian tanks and armored vehicles was traveling down the road towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

"No Russian troops or armor are moving towards Tbilisi," Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's general staff, told Reuters.Â

The news came hours after the French President announced both sides had accepted the peace plan.

ERDOGAN DUE MOSCOW
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will visit Russia and Georgia later on Wednesday to hold a series of talks.

Erdogan left for the Russian capital city of Moscow at 3:50 p.m. (GMT 1250) to hold a bilateral meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

On Thursday Erdogan will proceed from Moscow to Tbilisi, Georgia, to meet with Saakashvili.

Erdogan's visits to Moscow and Tbilisi aim at making contributions to efforts to secure a sustainable peace and stability in the region. He would be accompanied by Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.

SARKOZY'S STATEMENT
"There is a text. It has been accepted in Moscow, it was accepted here in Georgia. I have the agreement of all the protagonists," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at an early morning news conference in the Georgian capital.Â

"There is a text. It has been accepted in Moscow, it was accepted here in Georgia. I have the agreement of all the protagonists," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at an early morning news conference in the Georgian capital. Â

But Saakashvili said at an early morning news conference with Sarkozy his country would not allow its territorial integrity to be put into doubt under any peace agreement.Â

"The territorial integrity and belonging of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgia can never be put under doubt."

Temur Yakobashvili, Georgia's Cabinet minister for reintegration, said Wednesday that the troops had been driven out by Russian forces from the small part of Abkhazia they had held.

A Russian general on Tuesday said the Georgians had been driven out but by separatist forces and not the Russian military. 

SIX-POINT PEACE PLAN

A key reference to negotiation on the "future status" of two rebel zones in Georgia was cut from the peace plan, they said, with talks to focus instead on how to ensure "security and stability" there.

 

The six-point plan, which obliges the parties to halt fighting, will be reviewed by EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, according to Sarkozy.

 

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier ordered a halt to Russia’s military offensive against Georgia, but the Tbilisi government reported new attacks as it gathered international support to curtail Moscow.

 

In announcing the move, Medvedev declared that "the aggressor has been punished and suffered significant losses."

 

"I have taken the decision to end the operation to force Georgian authorities into peace," Medvedev told defense chiefs at a meeting on the South Ossetia conflict, though he warned any attacks by Georgia would be "liquidated".

 

Russian troops and tanks poured into Georgia on Friday after the Georgian army launched an offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, the Moscow-backed region which broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990s.

 

But NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels blasted Moscow for "an excessive, disproportionate use of force," and renewed their support for Georgia to ultimately join the military alliance.

 

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Russia's decision to stop its military advance in Georgia "is important but it is not enough," urging both sides to withdraw to their pre-conflict positions.

 

Georgia said several villages were bombed after Medvedev's announcement. Russia's military angrily denied the claim and said Georgian soldiers were still firing at its troops.

 

Russian troops and artillery also moved into Georgia's Mestia region near another separatist province, Abkhazia, in the west of the country, the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council told AFP.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Russia that the United States "stands for the territorial integrity of Georgia" and backs its democratically elected government.

 

But she said the top priority was that "those military operations really do, now, need to stop because calm needs to be restored," she said in Washington.

 

Before Medvedev's announcement, warplanes bombed the city of Gori, Georgia's security council said. The city's central square was hit and a Dutch cameraman and a Georgian journalist were killed, officials said.

 

Russian forces moved briefly into the western city of Senaki on Monday and destroyed a military base, officials said. They also entered Georgia’s main Black Sea port of Poti.

 

In a show of defiance to the Russian attacks, 100,000 people packed the main Rustaveli avenue of Tbilisi, where a sea of red-and-white Georgian flags waved above the crowds.

 

GEORGIA TO HOLD A RALLY

President Mikheil Saakashvili told a rally that Georgia would quit the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet states, and urged Ukraine to follow suit.

 

Georgia has received strong support from other former communist states with the leaders of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states traveling to Tbilisi where they addressed a mass rally.

 

"You have the right to freedom and independence. We are here to demonstrate our solidarity ... freedom is worth fighting for," shouted Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in live pictures carried by Georgian television.

 

Georgia took Russia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for "alleged acts of ethnic cleansing" between 1993 and 2008, starting with the period when Russian peacekeepers entered Georgia’s breakaway regions.

 

Efforts to find a diplomatic way out of the crisis were led Tuesday by the French president, who traveled to Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart about a French-European peace plan.

 

Russia claims the conflict has left more than 2,000 civilians dead, while the United Nations estimates some 100,000 people have been forced from their homes. The Georgian health minister Tuesday put the death toll in Georgia at 175 people, mainly civilians.

 

The United States cancelled on Tuesday a joint naval exercise with Russia in response to the conflict in Georgia, as it considered a range of options to respond to the aggression.

 

Other officials raised questions about Russia’s ongoing efforts to join the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as its membership of the Group of Eight most industrialized nations.