RUSSIA'S PRESIDENT, Dmitry Medvedev, outlined plans yesterday for a new security pact to ban the use of force in Europe and defuse increasing tensions between Moscow and Nato.
Yesterday's speech at the World Policy Conference in Evian, France, was intended as a bridge-building exercise after Russia's occupation of Georgia in August, which threatened a new cold war.
Mr Medvedev promised that, by midnight last night, Russian troops would leave "security zones" in the undisputed areas of Georgian territory. However, the Georgian government claimed Russian troops showed no signs of leaving the strategic outpost of Akhalgori, near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and outside the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Russian authorities also continued to block EU monitors from entering South Ossetia and Abkhazia (recognised as independent states by Moscow), which have been at the centre of the Russia-Georgia conflict.
"We are absolutely not interested in confrontation," said Mr Medvedev, devoting much of his speech to details of a new European security agreement he mentioned earlier in the year.
The new European pact would include "a clear affirmation of the inadmissibility of the use of force - or the threat of force - in international relations" and would be built on the principle of territorial integrity of independent nations.
It would also prevent "the development of military alliances to harm the security of other members of the treaty" - a clear reference to Nato expansion, which Moscow sees as a significant threat to its security.
Western diplomats said the proposals remained vague and unlikely to gain wide support in Europe. The US, Britain and eastern Europe in particular refuse to contemplate a Russian veto on Nato membership for states such as Ukraine or Georgia.
A Russian official said the initiative was a "work in progress" being discussed in European capitals. Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, talked it over with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, at the UN last month. The aim, the Russian official said, was to elicit responses and then invite European leaders to a summit, probably after a new US administration took office in January.
"Moscow wants a security relationship dependent on power rather than values,"said David Clark, of the Russia Foundation, a London-based think tank.