by Maya Topuria
TBILISI, Aug 19 (AFP) - Georgia admitted for the first time Thursday that its troops were on the offensive in South Ossetia and said they were poised to seize the entire rebel province after fierce fighting left dead and wounded on both sides.
"We took control of various strategic heights (in South Ossetia)," President Mikhail Saakashvili told reporters in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Saakashvili said the hills captured by Georgian forces "really have strategic significance" and their possession would allow the troops "to quickly take control of the whole territory".
Georgia previously said that fighting involving its troops -- officially peacekeepers -- was limited to defensive return of fire in response to attacks. Saakashvili's remarks were the first admission that they had seized territory.
The 36-year-old Georgian leader, backed by the West in his drive to reassert control over the entirety of a country that splintered after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, said he would return the land only as part of a peace deal.
"We are prepared to hand over this territory to the peacekeepers," Saakashvili said.
The peacekeeping force currently deployed in the region includes troops from Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia. But Tbilisi has accused the Russian forces of bias in favor of the separatists and has called for their withdrawal.
The dispute has become a major sore point in relations between Georgia and Russia, which seeks to retain its historic influence in the volatile Caucasus and which eyes US intentions in its own strategic backyard with deep suspicion.
Reports of dead and wounded in the fighting Thursday fluctuated throughout the day. Georgian officials announced that three Georgian servicemen had been killed and 10 wounded. South Ossetian officials said four South Ossetian civilians had died in the fighting.
A Georgian official also said eight Cossacks -- ethnic Russians who have fought wars in the Caucasus since Tsarist times -- fighting in the ranks of the rebel forces were killed.
South Ossetian officials denied that claim and Georgia did not produce the bodies for independent verification. If confirmed however, it would provide proof of involvement, albeit unofficial, by Russian irregulars in the conflict.
South Ossetia falls within Georgian borders but is inhabited mainly by ethnic Ossetians. The adjacent province of North Ossetia, also dominated by Ossetians, is part of Russia. South Ossetia has demanded either independence or rule from Moscow.
Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer elected in January after leading a bloodless revolution that forced the resignation of his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, has vowed to restore the unity of Georgia.
In June, he successfully brought another pro-Russian breakaway region, Adjara, back under the authority of Tbilisi and forced its independence-minded leader to flee to exile in Moscow.
But that move, and the current campaign in South Ossetia, has stoked anger among Russian nationalists, who believe their country has a right to some measure of control over parts of Georgia.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the conflict in South Ossetia was the result of a "stupid decision" by Georgia's parliament in the early 1990s to revoke the autonomous status the region enjoyed during Soviet times.
But the speaker of Georgia's parliament dismissed the comment.
"I wouldn't even like to respond to Putin in the tone that he used," speaker Nino Burjanadze said.