MOSCOW, Aug 11 (AFP) - Georgian troops and separatist forces in South Ossetia exchanged sporadic shelling and gunfire Wednesday, clouding talks here between Russia and Georgia on calming disputes on the status of the pro-Russian region.
"The situation is worrying," said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov after signing a joint communique with his Georgia counterpart Georgy Baramidze, RIA Novosti reported.
Baramidze said during a following press briefing that "Russia and Georgia must become predictable neighbors."
But he conceded the two sides discussed "uneasy matters" while his top deputy in Tbilisi accused the Russian of opening fire on Georgian troops.
Officials said six people were injured in the cross-border shooting which has grown more frequent as Georgia's new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, tries to win back control over his fractured republic.
"The attack came from armored personnel carries that carried the emblem of Russian peacekeepers" in the region, he said.
All three sides accused each other of launching the attacks first.
"We held negotiations to cease fire, and fighting would stop for 20 minutes, but then it would resume again with greater force," Russian defense ministry spokesman Nikolai Baranov told Rossia television.
The Caucasus republic, once the Soviet Union's richest, fell into pieces after the superpower's breakup in 1991, with three regions -- Adjara, South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- seeking either independence or rule from Moscow.
Saakashvili has won back Adjara, a key pocket on the Black Sea that oversees oil trade, with its leader leaving for self-imposed exile in Moscow in May.
But his strategy for the other two regions, which have few ethnic links with Georgia, is unclear.
Military threats from Georgia have been followed by vows to resolve the situation through dialogue, while Moscow issues increasingly aggressive statements as it grows more sensitive to Saakashvili's drive for military and economic assistance from the United States.
Georgia will soon be home to a key oil pipeline backed by Washington which bypasses Russia as it runs from the energy-rich Caspian Sea to Western markets.
Georgia had accused Moscow of sending spy planes over the republic -- it vowed to shoot down the next one -- and has threatened to sink ships that it said were illegally coming from Russia to Abkhazia.
"What kind of plane was it anyway?" Ivanov gruffly demanded while Baramidze stood silently, turning away his eyes, during a meeting Tuesday repeatedly on Russian state television.
In an interview published Wednesday in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, Baramidze accused Ivanov of at times being "hysterical."
But he added that he was willing to hold peace talks over the conflict zone and the growing tensions surrounding Tbilisi's relations with Moscow.
"We will be able to reach a common dialogue if Russia really wants peace in the region and to resolve the problem of separatism" in Georgia, the paper quoted him as saying.
"Just like Georgia needs a unified, strong Russia that has overcome chaos, in the very same way Russia needs a unified, unsplintered Georgia," he said.