By Margarita Antidze TBILISI, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The buffer zone inside Georgia where Russia plans to maintain a military presence cuts across the country's main east-west highway, a key economic lifeline, according to an official map seen by Reuters on Thursday. Russia has said it will pull back the bulk of the tanks and troops it sent into Georgia earlier this month, but after that it intends to keep 500 soldiers in a "zone of responsibility" deep inside Georgia's heartland. Russian officials say the zone was established in principle in an agreement between Russia and Georgia which pre-dates this month's conflict, but was never put into force. "The southern border of the so-called zone of responsibility crosses the highway in two places, near the villages of Agara and Shaveshebi," Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili told Reuters after showing it a map of the zone adopted as part of that agreement. "The Russians want to set up their so-called zone of responsibility near to Gori, but this is a violation of any agreement." Russian forces moved into Georgia to counter a Georgian attack on South Ossetia, a separatist region which is backed by Moscow. They quickly defeated the Georgian military and moved beyond South Ossetia into the Georgian heartland. The fighting ended when French President Nicolas Sarkozy brokered a ceasefire deal, and the Kremlin promised to pull back its forces by Aug. 22. The United States demanded on Thursday Russian troops pull out immediately and said Moscow was in violation of its commitment to withdraw. BUFFER ZONES But even if Moscow pulls back most of its forces to within Russia and South Ossetia, the question of how far the buffer zone penetrates into Georgia's heartland is likely to be fiercely contested by both sides. "There will be no buffer zones. We will never live with any buffer zones. We'll never allow anything like this," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told Reuters. The highway is the only major road link between Tbilisi and western Georgia, linking up with Turkey and Georgia's Black Sea cargo ports. It is heavily used for the transit of goods between landlocked Central Asia and the Black Sea. Georgia's first deputy economy minister, Vakhtang Lezhava, said trade between Tbilisi and the Black Sea had dropped by 95 percent since Russian troops set up checkpoints along the road. Russian officials say they have a legal right to station troops in the zone of responsibility if that is necessary to fulfil their peacekeeping obligations in South Ossetia. "It is completely legitimately set out by previous agreements. It is not a fresh decision by us," Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, told a news briefing this week. The six-point ceasefire plan brokered by Sarkozy gives Russia scope to keep some troops inside Georgia, beyond the territory of South Ossetia. Iakobashvili said when the deal on the "zone of responsibility" was signed in 2001, it envisaged the area being divided up between Russian and Georgian peacekeepers, so did not raise the prospect of Russian troops in Georgia's heartland. But Nogovitsyn said on Thursday Georgian peacekeepers would not now be allowed into the zone now. "Georgia, which de facto violated its peacekeeping status, no longer has the right to peacekeeping functions within this zone of responsibility," he said.
Russian conductor Valery Gergiev (C) greets the audience during a concert in front of South Ossetia's parliament building that was damaged during fighting in the breakaway region's main city Tskhinvali August ...
