By Margarita Antidze
GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, acting on behalf of the European Union, was in Georgia on Friday to verify whether Russia has honoured an agreement to pull back troops from part of the ex-Soviet state.
Friday is the deadline set out in a French-brokered cease-fire agreement for Russian troops to leave buffer zones around the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where they deployed during the war in August.
Russian troops and armoured personnel carriers left their checkpoints in the Russian-declared buffer zones this week.
But Georgia says they are still not honouring the cease-fire because thousands of troops remain inside the two breakaway regions, which threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s.
Kouchner, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, was to go on patrol in the area around South Ossetia with EU cease-fire monitors who took the place of Russian troops. He will meet Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili later.
The EU has effectively frozen talks on a new partnership pact with Russia until Moscow complies with the cease-fire deal, but analysts say the bloc's response has been tempered because Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas and is a major trade and investment partner.
Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said on Thursday the Russian pullout from the buffer zone checkpoints was a positive sign but it was not the end of the matter.
"The concerns that we have are that the Russian side clearly says that it will not under its voluntary intent withdraw forces from the rest of the territory of Georgia," she told reporters.
Russia says it is in full compliance with the cease-fire deal. It says South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which it has recognised as independent states, invited its forces to deploy there to protect them from Georgian aggression.
Georgia says Russia is failing on two cease-fire points. It says the presence of large numbers of Russian troops inside South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- about twice the number deployed before the conflict -- is in violation of a commitment to pull back forces to pre-conflict positions.
It also says Russia still has troops in pockets of land in Abkhazia and South Ossetia which, though inside the two regions' administrative borders, have for years been controlled de facto by Tbilisi.
Russia launched a massive counter-strike on land, sea and air in August after Georgian forces tried to retake South Ossetia. Russian troops also pushed into undisputed Georgian territory.
Moscow said it was morally obliged to act to protect residents in the breakaway region from what it called a Georgian genocide, but Western states condemned the Russian response as disproportionate.
