Russia, Georgia sign ceasefire but tensions high
* Russia signs peace agreement but bides time on pullout
* Georgia accuses Russia of blowing up bridge, Moscow denies
* U.S. demands Russia pulls troops out of Georgia now
* Germany's Merkel to meet Georgia's Saakashvili
By Margarita Antidze
TBILISI, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Russia and Georgia have signed a ceasefire agreement to end their war, but Russian troops remained in many parts of the Black Sea state on Sunday and tensions ran high between the two leaderships.
"Look at them. They are looters, they are drunkards," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said of Russian soldiers during a televised meeting in one village affected by fighting.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday signed a French peace plan already endorsed by Georgia and the two pro-Russian rebel regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are at the heart of the conflict.
But Moscow said that before withdrawing it would take unspecified "extra security measures" on Georgian territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to be drawn on how long a pullout would take, saying: "This does not just depend on us".
Georgia accused Russian soldiers and Abkhazian "armed gangs" of occupying more than a dozen Georgian villages and a hydro power plant, and physically abusing and robbing local people.
"The Russian troops are certainly not in any hurry to leave the country," Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told the BBC.
"The pattern that we see on the ground is unmistakeable," he said. "Systematic destruction of our military infrastructure and a seemingly random but no less painful ... degradation of our civilian infrastructure."
Months of tension between Georgia and Russia erupted on Aug. 7, when Tbilisi launched an assault to retake its breakaway province of South Ossetia.
Moscow responded with overwhelming military force and crushed Georgian forces in a six-day war, justifying its intervention by saying it was obliged to defend Russian nationals in the region.
"SABOTAGE GROUP"
Russian Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said on Saturday that Georgian snipers were still shooting in South Ossetia and that Russian forces had engaged a "Georgian sabotage group" near the Roki tunnel, the main crossing point for Russian troops into Georgia.
He denied Russian responsibility for the destruction of a key railway bridge near the town of Kaspi, which villagers said was blown up by men in military uniform.
The blast severed Georgia's main east-west rail link. Neighbouring Azerbaijan said that had forced it to suspend oil exports by rail to ports in western Georgia.
That served as reminder of Georgia's importance as a energy transit state -- it hosts key oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, bypassing Russia. The crisis marks Russia's first military action against a former Soviet republic since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. It has raised Western fears of a new Russian national assertiveness that could threaten Caspian fuel supplies, and prompted concern in other ex-Soviet states.
President George W. Bush said the ceasefire was a "hopeful step" but that Moscow must now pull its forces out. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, fresh from talks with Medvedev in southern Russia, was due to meet Saakashvili on Sunday.
Russian troops withdrew from an area 45 km (30 miles) from the Georgian capital on Saturday afternoon and a foreign military observer said it appeared a partial pullout might be under way, although that was not officially confirmed.
Saakashvili condemned the Kremlin at a televised meeting with villagers.
"They didn't manage to destroy the country, to destroy the government, to realise their wishes and dreams," he said, holding a small boy in his arms.
"I promise you we will rebuild your houses...Our villages will be the best in the world." (Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov in Sochi, Ralph Boulton in Tbilisi, Ron Popeski in Moscow and Adrian Croft in London; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
