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.

New York, Aug 22 : Washington fears that a newly emboldened but estranged Moscow could use its influence, money, energy resources, United Nations Security Council veto and its arms industry to undermine American interests around the world, if Russia’s invasion of Georgia increases renewed tensions with the West.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad spent two days this week in Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy and the visit may prove a worrisome preview of things to come, The New York Times reported.

Although Russia has long supplied arms to Syria, it has held back until now on providing the next generation of surface-to-surface missiles.

Damascus - Hamas' Damascus-based political chief Kh

Jerusalem - Russia should not agree to a Syrian request to deploy missiles on its territory, since this could destabalise the Middle East, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday.

"The deployment of long-range missiles is wrong," she told foreign correspondents in Jerusalem.

Livni was reacting to reports that Russia could possibly supply Syria with two types of missiles - S-300 surface-to-air missiles and Iskander E-ballistic missiles, which have a range of of 280 kilometres and can carry a a 480-kilogramme warhead.

Admitting that Russia has "its own interests" in the Middle East, Livni added however that "no one has an interest in destabilizing the region."

Istanbul  - Turkey gave permission on Thursday for US Navy ships to pass through Turkish-controlled waters to bring medical supplies to Georgia.

The permission for the US vessels to pass through the Bosporus Straits connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea followed several days of negotiations amid Turkish reluctance in the stand-off between Russia and the US over South Ossetia.

Controversy had previously arisen over whether the US had made a formal request for passage, under the terms of a decades-old maritime treaty.

The two US Navy ships - the "Comfort" and the "Mercy" - are carrying medical aid and are to be accompanied by one coastguard vessel.