MOSCOW, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused European Union leaders on Wednesday of unscrupulously distorting a Russia-EU deal on the deployment of international ceasefire monitors in Georgia. Lavrov said French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso signed a document late on Monday in the Georgian capital which contradicted a deal sealed earlier that day in Moscow. The document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, states that the EU "stands ready to deploy monitors in the whole of Georgian territory." But Lavrov said the document Russia had signed stated the ceasefire monitors would only be deployed outside the breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "It is a completely unscrupulous attempt not to honestly explain to (Georgian President Mikheil) Saakashvili what commitments the EU had taken on itself, and what commitments Russia had undertaken, but to be led on a string by Mr Saakashvili," Lavrov said. "For us what happened in Tbilisi, what was discussed in Tbilisi, has absolutely no significance," the Russian foreign minister told a news briefing. "We have no interest in the pieces of paper which Mr. Saakashvili takes out of his pocket and shows to journalists." Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, has acted as mediator between Russia and Georgia since a brief war last month in which Russia sent troops and tanks into the territory of its ex-Soviet neighbour. Russia has said it was morally obliged to act to stop Tbilisi committing "genocide" against the separatist regions, but Moscow's actions have drawn widespread international comdemnation.
A child plays with toy cars during a protest against Russia's rising petrol prices outside the regional office of state-controlled oil company Rosneft in the southern city of Stavropol September 10, ...
