MOSCOW, Aug 18 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin Wednesday declined to visit Georgia amid escalating violence in its separatist, pro-Moscow region of South Ossetia and blamed Tbilisi's policies for the conflict.
Hostilities have simmered in South Ossetia for the past few months as Georgia's youthful new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, seeks to bring it back under federal control.
Putin said it would be inappropriate for him to visit Georgia amid the violence, which has left at least four Georgian servicemen dead over the past two days.
"We have discussed such a possibility with Georgian colleagues, but taking into account the situation that's developing there, my trip would be inappropriate," Putin said in televised comments from the Ukrainian resort town of Sochi.
Russia is today an effective protector of South Ossetia, a north Georgian region that declared independence from Tbilisi after winning an armed conflict with Moscow's help in the early 1990s.
The Russian leader said Georgia's "stupid" policies taken when it first became independent from the Soviet Union were responsible for today's violence.
"I'd like to remind people that this conflict happened after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Georgia, having received independence, suddenly announced that it was revoking the autonomous status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (which also declared independence after a war in the early 1990s)," Putin said.
"After this stupid decision, inter-ethnic conflicts in Georgia began," Putin said.
The vast majority of South Ossetians today hold Russian passports, use the ruble and rely on Russian peacekeepers to keep Tbilisi's ambitions at bay.
Early Wednesday, Georgian television reported that three servicemen were killed overnight in the conflict zone amid claims by both sides that a "third hand" -- one which was not loyal to either party -- was present in South Ossetia in order to try to spark a conflict.
Putin urged Georgia and South Ossetia to settle their conflict peacefully and Georgia's Chief of Staff Givi Iukuridze told AFP the two sides had reached "an agreement for conducting a joint operation" to root out this force.
He said no date for the operation had been set.
Saakashvili -- who has vowed to reunite his fractured Caucasus nation after peacefully ousting Georgia's veteran leadership in a bloodless revolution last year -- has appealed for international peacekeepers to mediate the South Ossetia conflict.
Georgian Foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili called on Wednesday for an international conference to be held on South Ossetia, during an address to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna.
She called for urgent talks to be held, under the auspices of the European Union and the United Nations, to find a peaceful way of providing South Ossetia with the greatest possible autonomy within a federal system.
The current chair of the OSCE, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passi, is due to travel shortly to Tbilisi and offered last week to host talks in Sofia between Georgian and South Ossetian leaders.
The US charge d'affaires at the OSCE voiced support for the Georgian proposal on Wednesday, but it was immediately rejected by Russia's foreign minister, Serguei Lavrov.
The United States, which is vying with Russia for influence over the strategic region that houses oil pipelines, has warily watched the violence and the latest series of clashes led to a telephone conversation between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
The Russian foreign minister said earlier on Wednesdsay that "we see no reason for creating a new forum of negotiations," referring to Tbilisi's call for Western intervention.
Repeated fighting has undermined a ceasefire signed late last week between Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in an intense drive to defuse the crisis in the region.
Georgia also has another separatist region, Abkhazia, which also declared independence from Tbilisi after a civil war in the early 1990s.