Russia promises to start Georgia pullback

By Margarita Antidze

TBILISI (Reuters) - Russia said it would complete a pullback of troops in Georgia by the end of Friday but it stopped short of the extensive withdrawal demanded by the West, saying it would keep a force deep inside Georgia's heartland.

Western states have grown increasingly impatient that Russian troops remain inside Georgia nearly a week after a ceasefire ended a war that broke out when Tbilisi tried to retake its breakaway South Ossetia region.

In some of its toughest comments to date, the White House accused Russia of breaking a promise to leave Georgia.

"The withdrawal is not happening very quickly, if it in fact has begun," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "The withdrawal needs to take place, and needs to take place now."

Washington was to underline its support for aspiring NATO member Georgia on Friday by sending the U.S. navy destroyer USS McFall into the Black Sea, the backyard of the Russian navy, to deliver relief supplies to Georgia.

NATO this week suspended contacts with Russia in protest at the conflict, and Russian hit back by freezing some military cooperation with the alliance.

In Washington, the World Bank said it was sending a mission to Georgia on Friday to assess the economic damage caused by the fighting. The Bank would also set up a fund to help pay for Georgia's reconstruction.

Russian forces were rushed into Georgia on August 8 to repel an attack by Georgian forces on South Ossetia, a province that broke from Tbilisi in the early 1990s and is backed by Moscow.

Russian troops and tanks quickly crushed the Georgian military and pushed on deeper into the ex-Soviet state, halting about 45 km (30 miles) from the capital, Tbilisi.

BATTLE TANKS

A Reuters reporter on Thursday saw a column of T-72 battle tanks moving out of Georgia and into Russia across a mountain pass, but elsewhere most Russian units showed little sign they were preparing to withdraw.

Moscow said it was honoring its commitment to pull back under a ceasefire deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Russian defense officials said what they called reinforcement troops would be pulled back to within South Ossetia by the end of Friday, and from there withdrawn to Russian soil within 10 days.

But they made a distinction between those troops and what they described as a peacekeeping force. This force would stay on indefinitely in South Ossetia, and a "security zone" around it, the officials said.

That zone would leave Russian troops still inside the Georgian heartland and close to the main east-west highway on which its economy depends.