By Margarita Antidze

ERGNETI, Georgia, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Georgian police hoisted the national flag and lit a fire in this deserted village on Wednesday, watched by South Ossetian separatist rebels across the no-man's land on their de facto border.

Russia is holding the European Union responsible for guaranteeing peace and security in the volatile area it is vacating around the breakaway region and the EU said it would oversee a "step-by-step" handover of the buffer zones.

The scene on Wednesday underlined the risks.

Georgian police tore in on the heels of withdrawing Russian forces and set up base in a looted shop in Ergneti, a deserted, blackened shell of a village. Just 300 yards (metres) away, South Ossetian separatist soldiers eyed them.

A patrol of French EU monitors kept a safe distance, and refused to talk to reporters. Some plucked fruit from the trees.

The Russian troops were nowhere to be seen, having rolled back 20 km (12 miles) from the edge of their buffer zone back across the de facto border and into South Ossetia.

"We made it everywhere we needed to be," local Georgian police chief Vladimir Jugeli said.

Asked whether their close proximity to the South Ossetian position was a cause for concern, Jugeli replied: "It's not dangerous. They wouldn't dare."

Russia pulled back on Wednesday from buffer zones outside South Ossetia under a ceasefire deal brokered by France on behalf of the European Union.

Moscow sent in tanks and troops in August to repel a Georgian military offensive to retake pro-Russian South Ossetia, more than 15 years after it threw off Tbilisi's rule.

MONITORS DETAINED

The European Union deployed more than 200 observers to monitor what appears to be a very delicate ceasefire.

The Georgians are still angry, the South Ossetians revelling in their victory and their big-power backing from over the Caucasus mountains in Russia. Georgian refugees are expected to come pouring back.

Rights groups and displaced Georgian refugees say Ossetian militias continue to roam the buffer zone, having looted and torched homes and put thousands of villagers to flight after the pullout of Georgian forces in mid-August.

An EU patrol was held briefly inside the buffer zone on Monday by "unidentified persons", the mission confirmed a day later. A source familiar with the case told Reuters they were detained for an hour by around 20 Ossetian militiamen, their radios and other equipment seized.

A spokesman for the EU mission said security was up to the Georgian police. "Georgian police will be responsible for law and order," he said, "so people can go back to their villages".

Russia has made clear it will hold the EU monitors responsible for any incidents. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Wednesday for "definite steps" to prevent violence. "In these areas adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia a special regime should be established that will not allow anyone to carry out provocations," he said. (Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Tbilisi and Conor Sweeney in Moscow; writing by Matt Robinson; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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