WARSAW, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Two Polish journalists were detained in Georgia's South Ossetia rebel region on Monday while trying to verify Russia's compliance with a deal to withdraw forces from Georgia, their employer TVP3 said. Poland's embassy in Tbilisi was trying to negotiate the release of the journalists, Dariusz Bohatkiewicz and Marcin Wesolowski, and their Georgian driver, it said. "They were taken into custody by a unit claiming to be the Ossetian police but immediately after that they were handed over to the Russian military forces operating in the area," Maciej Dachowski, Poland's deputy ambassador to Georgia, told TVP3. "According to our information they're being treated well," he added. In a report from the Georgian capital Tbilisi, TVP3 said its team had been trying to check whether Russia was withdrawing its forces from Georgia in line with the French-brokered ceasefire deal that ended last month's brief war. They were detained near the village of Karaleti, which marks the start of a Russian-controlled buffer zone, some 30 km (19 miles) inside Georgia proper. Despite heavy Western pressure to pull all its forces from Georgia, Moscow claims the right to maintain buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second breakaway Georgian province, to ensure no further bloodshed. Earlier on Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy held talks with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on the situation in Georgia. Sarkozy repeated the West's call for a complete Russian troop withdrawal. The conflict erupted last month when Georgia tried to retake South Ossetia by force, triggering a huge Russian counter-attack that has badly strained relations between Moscow and the West. Moscow has since recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, though hardly any other countries have followed suit. (Writing by Gareth Jones, editing by Sami Aboudi)
Russian peacekeepers watch a protest at their checkpoint in the village of Khobi, September 8, 2008. Georgia accused Russia of committing human rights violations against ethnic Georgians in the breakaway provinces ...
