FACTBOX: Developments in Georgia, Aug 14

Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:07am EDT
 
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(Reuters) - Following are developments in Georgia at 1435 GMT on Thursday:

-- Russian General Staff said it was legitimate for "Russian peacekeepers" to be in Poti and for what it termed "reconnaissance parties" to be in Gori, two days after Russia signed up to a French-led peace plan to stop the fighting.

-- Major-General Vyacheslav Borisov said that for another two days Russian troops would stay in the region to carry out procedures of handing over control functions to Georgian law enforcement bodies after which they will leave.

-- Georgia's parliament voted on Thursday to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Russian-led grouping of ex-Soviet states.

-- Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's general staff, said it was legitimate for Russian peacekeepers to be in the Georgian port town of Poti for intelligence operations.

-- More than 100 Russian military vehicles were massed two km (1.5 miles) from the centre of Zugdidi, in western Georgia, a Reuters witness said.

-- Russia's General Staff said on Thursday it was concerned by the type of cargoes the United States was airlifting to Georgia. Two U.S. C-17 military aircraft carrying supplies had already arrived in Georgia in a show of Washington's support for its embattled ally.

-- Russian forces said they had shot down a total of three Georgian spy drones over South Ossetia and reported sniper attacks by Georgian special forces on and around the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

OTHER EVENTS:

-- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the architect of the European Union-sponsored ceasefire, before heading to Tbilisi.

(For related story, click on))

(Writing by David Cutler; London Editorial Reference;)

 

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