by Maya Topuria
TBILISI, Aug 19 (AFP) - Georgia withdrew its troops from South Ossetia on Thursday after first pouring in tanks and soldiers in a show of force aimed at winning control over the separatist pro-Russia republic.
The manoeuvers, the first of their kind, prompted a furious reaction from Moscow and highlighted how far tensions have escalated in a strategic region that has seen several bloody conflicts since the Soviet Union`s collapse in 1991.
"We have withdrawn from the positions that we took earlier and they are now being patrolled by peacekeepers," said Givi Yukuridze, chief of staff of the Georgian army.
The move "shows the sincere intentions of the Georgian leadership to establish peace in the region," Georgian Defense Minister Giorgi Baramidze was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
But Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili warned that Tbilisi would not hesitate to send troops back to South Ossetia if villages populated by ethnic Georgians in the breakaway region were to come under attack.
"If civilians in Georgian villages come under threat again, we will come back to Ossetia in 15 minutes and ... we will go straight to (the Ossetian capital) Tskhinvali," Okruashvili told Georgian television.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had said earlier in the day his country was poised to strike further into South Ossetia but would prefer to withdraw its troops and begin political negotiations.
It was his first direct admission of the presence of his military in South Ossetia proper, rather than in a peacekeeping zone that is also patrolled by Russian and South Ossetian troops.
"Georgia must understand that such actions are inadmissible," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The chance of getting off this dangerous, opportunistic course is running out," it said.
Talks between Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia -- which has ethnic links to North Ossetia, a republic within Russia -- have been launched at various levels but so far failed to produce any results.
Georgia previously said that fighting involving its troops -- officially peacekeepers -- was limited to defensive return fire in response to attacks. Saakashvili`s remarks Thursday were the first admission that they had seized territory.
The 36-year-old Georgian leader has been backed by the West in his drive to reassert control over the whole of his splintered, impoverished country.
The dispute has become a major sore point in relations between Georgia and Russia, which seeks to retain its historic influence in the volatile Caucasus and eyes US intentions in its own strategic backyard with deep suspicion.
Meanwhile reports of dead and wounded in the latest round of fighting Thursday fluctuated throughout the day.
Georgian officials announced that three Georgian servicemen had been killed and 10 wounded. South Ossetian officials said four South Ossetian civilians had died in the fighting.
A Georgian official also said eight Cossacks -- ethnic Russians who have fought wars in the Caucasus since Tsarist times -- fighting in the ranks of the rebel forces had been killed.
South Ossetian officials denied that claim. But Georgian television showed two bodies, one of whom the deputy head of Georgia`s security ministry, Gigi Ugulava, said was a Cossack.
"One of the men is a Cossack. We have not yet identified the other," Ugulava said, adding that the other six bodies had not yet been recovered.
South Ossetia falls within Georgian borders but is inhabited mainly by ethnic Ossetians. The adjacent province of North Ossetia, also dominated by Ossetians, is part of Russia. South Ossetia has demanded either independence or rule from Moscow.
Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer elected president in January after leading a bloodless revolution that forced the resignation of his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, has vowed to restore the unity of Georgia.
In June, he successfully brought another pro-Russian breakaway region, Adjara, back under the authority of Tbilisi and forced its independence-minded leader to flee to exile in Moscow.
But that move, and the current campaign in South Ossetia, has stoked anger among Russian nationalists, who believe their country has a right to some measure of control over parts of Georgia.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the conflict in South Ossetia was the result of a "stupid decision" by Georgia`s parliament in the early 1990s to revoke the autonomous status the region had enjoyed during Soviet times.
But the Speaker of Georgia`s parliament dismissed the comment.
"I wouldn`t even like to respond to Putin in the tone that he used," Nino Burjanadze said.