The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Tbilisi

Russian forces have withdrawn from a disputed village near the rebel South Ossetia region that Georgia had claimed was being occupied in violation of a ceasefire agreement, Georgian police said Friday.

"The Russians have pulled out and Georgian police will soon be in Perevi," interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said.

He said he hoped the move was a signal that Russia "will finally start fulfilling the (ceasefire) agreement," but that the withdrawal was only "the beginning of a long road."

Perevi, a mainly ethnic Georgian village of about 1,100 people on the western border of South Ossetia, had been under Russian control since a five-day war August.

Georgia had accused Russia of being in violation of the European Union-brokered ceasefire agreement by refusing to withdraw from Perevi.

Tbilisi has also called for Russia to withdraw from the Akhalgori district in South Ossetia and the Kodori Gorge in Georgia's other separatist region, Abkhazia-both of which were under Tbilisi's control before the war. Russian forces moved into Georgia on August 8 to repel a Georgian military attempt to retake South Ossetia, which had received extensive backing from Moscow since breaking away from Tbilisi's control in the early 1990s.

Under the ceasefire, Russian forces later withdrew to within South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognised as independent states.