Moscow/Tiblisi - Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili called for international peacekeepers in the conflict zone around the country's two breakaway provinces, Georgian media reported.

"The preservation of Georgia's territorial integrity is impossible without an internationalization of the peacekeeping troops," Saakashvili said at a meeting of the country's national security council late Friday.

But the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia are opposed to an international peacekeeping force, currently being discussed by the European Union.

Tbilisi - Georgia's security council chief Alexander Lomaia confirmed Russian forces had left the strategic cities of Gori and Zugdidi in Georgia late Friday.

He added, however, that Russian troops had not unblocked checkpoints on a key highway between Tbilisi and Senaki, news agency Interfax reported.

Georgian media, meanwhile, reported explosions heard at Georgian military bases in Senaki, suggesting the ongoing demolition of Georgian military hardware by Russian forces.

Russia's army general staff said that troops were "in the final stage of pulling back," fulfilling President Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to pull out troops by Friday.

Helsinki - The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has received information that Russian forces have begun to withdraw from Georgia, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb

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.

Damascus  - A Syrian official on Friday denied that the country has agreed to host Russian missiles in an effort to counter the planned deployment of a US missile shield in Eastern Europe.

"What was reported by some media with regard to Syria's agreement on deploying Iskander missiles in its territories are baseless," he told the Syrian Arab News Agency
(SANA).

The official, who was not named in the report, said no such issue was discussed at all during talks this week between Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.