Rice meets with peace broker Sarkozy en route to crisis talks in Tbilisi

US SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in France yesterday for talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy, broker of a ceasefire accord on the Russia-Georgia conflict, before heading to crisis talks in Tbilisi.

Sarkozy, who negotiated the six-point peace plan as current president of the EU, greeted Rice yesterday at Bregancon Fort, an official residence on the French Riviera. They were joined by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who also travelled to Moscow and Tbilisi to try and cement the fragile EU-backed truce.

The draft plan fleshes out a French-brokered agreement giving Russian peacekeepers the express right to patrol beyond South Ossetia, the disputed border region at the heart of the conflict.

An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there are important clarifications still to be made and the US would support more powers for the Russian peacekeepers only if they were limited, well defined and temporary.

The ceasefire plan includes a commitment not to resort to force, to end hostilities definitively and provide free access for humanitarian aid. Georgian military forces are to withdraw to their usual bases, while Russian military forces are to pull back to the lines held prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

Russian forces are also authorised to “implement additional security measures” pending agreement on an international peace mechanism. Still, analysts said there were holes in the plan. Robert Hunter, former ambassador to Nato under former US president Bill Clinton, said the EU plan has halted much of the fighting but hardly commits the Russians to much.

“As it stands, this proposal leaves the Russians in total control,” said. “There is nothing in here about the inviolability of Georgia’s frontiers,” which he said lets Russia move forward on absorbing the separatist regions.

Meanwhile, Rice said after meeting with Sarkozy yesterday: “The US stands strongly, as the president of France just said, for the territorial integrity of Georgia.”

From France Rice is go to Georgia today for talks with President Mikheil Saakashvili, aimed at showing Washington’s “solidarity” with the former Soviet republic.

Rice’s trip marks a US willingness to seize back the diplomatic initiative on the conflict, so far spearheaded by Sarkozy.