Around 300 Russian railroad troops arrived in the self-proclaimed republic on May 31 as part of a Moscow humanitarian assistance initiative for Abkhazia. The deployment met a furious reaction from Georgia, which accused Moscow of preparing for military intervention.
"Our main goal is to ensure the withdrawal of the Russian railroad troops from Abkhazia," Saakashvili said in an interview with the Rustavi-2 television channel late on Monday.
"They are not doing railroad repairs there, but preparing [the road infrastructure] to bring in tanks and other heavy military equipment to secure the border [between Georgia and Abkhazia] along the Inguri River," he said.
Relations between Russia and its ex-Soviet ally have deteriorated greatly in recent years over Moscow's support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another separatist region in Georgia, and Tbilisi's drive for NATO membership.
Saakashvili said Russia's decision to establish closer ties with separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia rekindled the "frozen conflicts" in the region.
"Russia's recent steps demonstrate the drive to rekindle the conflicts and may lead to a dangerous confrontation," he said. "What we see is the beginning of intervention."
Saakashvili and newly elected Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met last Friday ahead of an informal summit of leaders of the post-Soviet CIS states near St. Petersburg, saying they wanted to tackle controversial issues that have plagued bilateral relations in recent years.
"It was a constructive dialogue, but the problems remained," Saakashvili said.
Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Saturday that unarmed Russian railroad troops did not pose any threat to Georgia and would leave Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia within two months.
Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed in the subsequent hostilities. The two sides signed a ceasefire in 1994 in Moscow.
Peace talks between Abkhazia and Georgia broke off in July 2006 when Tbilisi sent troops into Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge and established an alternative Abkhaz administration there.
