Russian officials pull out of Georgia in spy row

TBILISI, Sep 29 (Reuters) Russia began pulling out some of its diplomats and their families from Georgia today as the small ex-Soviet state pressed spying charges against a group of Russian army officers.

NATO, which pro-Western Georgia wants to join to the dismay of Russia, urged both sides to show restraint but said it had no clear role to play in helping defuse the row.

The first group from several hundred people to be evacuated from the Southern Caucasus country left oday on two Ilyushin cargo planes. Russian ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko, recalled by Moscow, was due to leave on one of the planes.

Four Russian army officers, whose arrest by Georgia on charges of spying for the GRU military intelligence sparked the crisis, were delivered on Friday to a Tbilisi court which can order them held in jail or, as demanded by Russia, free them.

Relations with old Soviet master Russia have worsened dramatically since pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in the 2003 ''Rose Revolution''.

Saakashvili's pursuit of NATO membership particularly irks Russia. He himself has publicly attacked Moscow, saying it supports separatists who control two regions of his country in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Police in Tbilisi continued to surround Russian army headquarters, which controls two Russian bases, relics from Soviet times that are to be withdrawn in 2008.

A fifth Russian officer sought by Georgia in connection with the alleged spy ring remained inside the grey four-storey glass-and-concrete soviet era building that has been the focus of the crisis.

''Russia will not hand over Lieutenant-Colonel Konstantin Pichugin to Georgia,'' Kovalenko, the ambassador, said.

Interfax news agency qouted an unamed diplomatic source as saying Russia was also planning evacuation of some non-essential staff and members of families from its two bases -- Batumi on the Black Sea coast and Akhalkalaki in the south.

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