Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was to hold talks Wednesday with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the ceasefire in Moscow's war with Georgia, two days before a deadline for the pullback of his troops.
The French and Russian leaders were to hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of an international policy conference in Evian, in the French Alps, after each giving a speech before the conference.
Meeting over lunch, they were set to review Moscow's adherence to the European Union-backed peace plan in Georgia and the outlook for E.U.-Russia relations, as well as possible joint action to tackle the global financial crisis.
Russian forces Wednesday abandoned posts in two "buffer zones" which they had seized around Georgia's rebel South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions. This major withdrawal was expected to be completed during the day. Under the E.U. peace plan, Russian forces are to pull back by Friday from the buffer zones to positions they held before the August conflict, inside the two Moscow-backed rebel regions.
Medvedev said in a Kremlin video Tuesday he would use his Evian visit to call for a joint response to the crisis, as well as repeat calls for a new European security pact.
"The problems of international politics, the crisis in the financial system, require immediate joint action," Medvedev said. "I will speak in Evian of the need to find common responses to the global upheaval in the economy."
The Russian leader was also to repeat a call, made during a visit to Berlin in June, for a "regional pact" on European security to replace a system held over from the Cold War era.
"The old security system has shown its total inefficiency...events in Iraq, in Kosovo, in the Caucasaus, in Afghanistan and many other regions are evidence of this," he said. "I am convinced we need to go further and discuss concrete measures."
The French president held off officially confirming his attendance at the Evian conference until the last minute, apparently until it became clear Russian troops were keeping to their commitment.