Georgia and Russia have agreed on a peace plan over South Ossetia, the French president said.

Nicolas Sarkozy and his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili came up with a revised document after agreeing changes with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Mr Sarkozy met Mr Medvedev in Moscow then flew to Georgia after Russia ordered a halt to military operations in the region.

Fierce fighting broke out on Thursday when Georgia sent troops to retake South Ossetia, a pro-Russian province that threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s.

Moscow responded with a massive counter-attack deep into Georgia.

In a joint conference with Mr Sarkozy, the Georgian leader said: "It is a political document. It is an agreement of principles and I think we have full coincidence of principles."

The changes made were approved by Mr Medvedev and included removing a reference to talks on the future status of South Ossetia, the two men said.

At least 150,000 Georgians cheered Mr Saakashvili at a rally after he vowed to punish Russia, saying: "I promise you today that I'll remind them of everything they have done and one day we will win."

Five leaders from former Soviet-controlled states Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Poland joined him at a second rally to show their support for Georgia.

Meanwhile, the US said Russia's integration into international institutions like the World Trade Organization is at risk because of what it called "behaviour that looks like it's from another time".

The United States may cancel a naval exercise with Russia to indicate its disapproval of Moscow's attacks on its neighbour, American officials said.

Georgia has filed a law suit against Russia at the International Court of Justice for ethnic cleansing, the secretary of Georgia's Security Council, Kakha Lomaia, said.

Russia says 1,600 South Ossetian civilians have been killed in the fighting and thousands are homeless but these figures have not been independently verified. Georgia has reported close to 200 killed and hundreds of wounded.

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