SOCHI, Aug 16: Russia defied US demands for an immediate pullout of its troops from Georgia on Saturday, saying extra security arrangements needed to be put in place before a withdrawal could begin.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, working from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, added his signature to a French-led peace plan already endorsed by Georgia and by leaders of its two rebel regions.

But Medvedev also ordered “extra security measures” in the conflict zone. His Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the withdrawal of Moscow’s forces would depend on those measures, whose nature was not made clear.

The agreement drafted this week authorises Russian forces to proceed with “additional security measures on a temporary basis” while awaiting the arrival of international peacekeepers which requires passage of a UN Security Council resolution.

The United States demanded on Friday that Russia pull out of Georgia immediately, accusing Moscow of “bullying” its tiny southern neighbour by sending in troops and tanks.

A simmering conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted into war more than a week ago, when Tbilisi launched an assault to retake its separatist province of South Ossetia, prompting a huge counter-offensive from Moscow, which supports the rebels.

Violence on the ground continued.

Georgia accused Russian troops of blowing up a railway bridge on Saturday in broad daylight, saying the country’s main east-west train link had been severed.

Russia’s General Staff denied attacking the bridge, declaring that hostilities that flared nine days ago around South Ossetia were, as far as it was concerned, over.

One end of the bridge, near the town of Kaspi, had collapsed on to the river bank in a pile of rubble and twisted steel, pictures filmed by a television crew showed.

“We are now in peacetime. Why should we be blowing up bridges when our job is to restore ?” Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General Staff, told a daily official briefing in Moscow. “This therefore can only be yet another completely unverified statement.’

RAILWAY COMMUNICATIONS LOST: A television crew interviewed villagers, who said men in military uniform arrived by jeep, uncoiled wires and detonated a device remotely. The blast blew out windows of nearby homes.

The villagers blamed Russian forces but the identity of the attackers could not immediately be verified. Irregular militias, based in South Ossetia, have also been operating against Georgian targets in recent days.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the ceasefire on Friday after a much longer than expected five-hour meeting with visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Russian Colonel-General Nogovitsyn said Georgian snipers were still shooting in South Ossetia and that Russian forces had engaged a “Georgian sabotage group” near the Roki tunnel, the main crossing point for Russian troops into Georgia.

Russian forces continued to move around in areas of Georgia far outside the separatist areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where they maintain peacekeeping forces.

In the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, witnesses said Russian troops had carried off crates and equipment in trucks and helicopters from the port and airport.

“They carried out everything they could take,” a local resident, Tengiz Khukhia, said. “They loaded it onto the helicopters and took it straight away.”

Rice, visiting Tbilisi on Friday to show support for close ally Saakashvili, criticised Moscow heavily for its actions.—Reuters