Sides trade claims as Georgia tensions rise

MOSCOW-Russia and the United States called on Wednesday for a halt to violence in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia where separatists made disputed claims of military success against Tbilisi's forces.But while Moscow's Foreign Ministry urged calm over the deepening conflict, the Russian military accused Georgian military jets of overflying South Ossetia, a charge Tbilisi swiftly denied."The current situation in South Ossetia is uneasy and it needs measures to lower the confrontations," Itar-Tass news agency quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Boris Malakov, as saying.Georgia's key Western ally Washington called for talks."We urge all the parties to enter into a dialogue on this issue," U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told reporters in Washington."We believe that it is important for them to come to a discussion to stop any acts of violence," he added.Tensions between ex-Soviet Georgia and the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have deepened recently with fears the once frozen conflicts could end up in open war.The rebel regions lie in a belt of land in the Caucasus that is emerging as a transit route for oil and gas exports from the Caspian Sea, a strategically important region over which the United States and Russia are locked in a battle for influence.
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As in the days of Noah....