GENEVA, Nov 19: Russia and Georgia agreed to hold further talks, likely next month, after discussing security and refugees here in the wake of an August war between the two countries, officials said on Wednesday.

“We have agreed to continue the discussions in December,” said Dmitri Sanakoev, the head of the exiled pro-Georgian South Ossetian administration.

“The main focus of discussions was security,” he added in reference to Wednesday's session.

His comments were echoed by Russian delegation head and deputy Foreign Minister Gregory Karasin, though he was less specific on the date of the next round of talks.

“We had intense discussions for three hours which were very tough on questions of security,” Russia's Interfax news agency reported him as saying.

“We've still got more to talk about, but apparently this will take place at the end of the year, in December,” he added.

International talks at the UN headquarters resumed here in an attempt to get Russia and Georgia to bury the hatchet following last August's five-day war in the troubled north Caucasus.

A previous round of talks broke up in embarrassing failure last month when Russian and Georgian delegates failed to even sit down in the same room amid disagreements on the presence of representatives from Georgian rebel regions.

This time around all parties agreed to informal sessions which allowed the presence of representatives from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Moscow-backed regions which were at the centre of the August 8-12 conflict, officials said.

“The participants are ready to sit at the same table” this time, said Maxim Gvinjia, deputy foreign minister of the Abkhazian delegation ahead of the talks.

“We are not going to discuss the status” of the two breakaway republics, but “we hope to have constructive discussions,” he told journalists.

Diplomats had been expecting a better atmosphere than the acrimonious October talks, noting that the Russians and Georgians — whose delegations are both headed by their deputy foreign ministers — dined together on Wednesday night.

“They spoke to each other during the evening, even without intermediaries,”a European diplomatic source said.

It had been decided to go for an “informal approach so as not to offend any sensibilities”, a European diplomatic source said.

Georgia had objected to delegations from the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia — whose independence has been recognised by Moscow — because Tbilisi insists they are still part of Georgian sovereign territory.

Russian troops and tanks rolled into Georgia on August 8 to push back a Georgian offensive to retake South Ossetia.

Russia has since withdrawn from most of Georgia in line with an EU-brokered ceasefire but Tbilisi is furious at the continued presence of 7,600 Russian troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Tensions remain high in the region, and the French EU presidency earlier this week condemned recent violence that left at least three dead and endangered European observers.

A ceasefire brokered by the EU has been in place since August and EU monitors are patrolling areas near Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but shootings and other security incidents remain frequent.

—AFP