Tbilisi  - President Mikheil Saakashvili Tuesday urged Georgians to pursue "peaceful resistance" to Russia after Moscow's decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent.

Georgia could rely on international support, as there was no legal basis to the decision announced by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev earlier in the day, Saakashvili said in an address on state television.

"Now everyone knows that the Russian leadership respects no laws and is not deploying peacekeeping troops," he said.

Tbilisi/Geneva - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres arrived in South Ossetia on Friday on a visit to ascertain the humanitarian situation in the area, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

The visit to South Ossetia concludes Guterres' four day visit to the region, which included meetings with government officials in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

Moscow, Tbilisi - Russia pledged to pull back the bulk of its troops from Georgia by the end of Friday, but planned to hold a buffer zone and "peacekeeping forces" in two breakaway regions, angering Western diplomats.

Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsin, deputy head of the Russian military's general staff, said Friday that the Russian forces are "in final stage of pull back."

The general said 18 additional Russian checkpoints were being built up Friday as part of a Russian-controlled buffer zone along the border of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetian and Abkhazia.

A contingent of 2,142 Russian peacekeeping forces would remain in Abkhazia and 452 troops in South Ossetia, Nogovitsyn said at a briefing in Moscow.

Tbilisi (Georgia), Aug 13 : Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili today said that Russian troops were completely disregarding the cease-fire agreement reached on Tuesday, continuing a campaign of violence against Georgian citizens that amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Saakashvili, speaking in Tbilisi alongside a handful of other Presidents from former Soviet states, said he had reports that Russian troops were still taking control of Georgian territory beyond the borders of two separatist regions and were forcing residents into “internment camps”.

Tbilisi/Brussels  - The Georgian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday welcomed proposals that the European Union play a stronger role in talks with the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia - an area where Russia is currently seen as the main powerbroker.

The ministry, in a statement said, it "has been informed" that EU members "agreed on the proposal to expand the EU's role in resolving the conflict in the Abkhazia region."

Tbilisi - At least