(TBILISI) - A senior official in the European Union's monitoring mission in Georgia on Thursday said he would meet Russian officials to discuss the practical aspects of a planned Russian troop pull-back.

Gilles Janvier, a general from France's gendarmerie and the deputy head of the observer mission, said he expected to meet Russian military officials in the Abkhazia separatist region on Friday and the South Ossetia separatist region on Sunday.

Janvier told AFP: "We will discuss purely technical arrangements" connected to the pull-back of Russian troops from buffer zones around two Georgian rebel regions.

The EU observer mission, drawn from nearly all the bloc's 27 nations, was due to launch on October 1.

After that Russian troops have until October 10 to return to positions they held before last month's conflict, according to an EU-brokered peace plan.

Georgia and Russia briefly went to war last month over South Ossetia, which like Abkhazia is backed by Moscow.

Analysts are sceptical about whether Russia will pull back from some parts of South Ossetia that were controlled by Georgia before last month's hostilities.

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