The third round of international talks on the situation of Caucasus concluded in Geneva on Thursday with no concrete agreement on issues left over by the Russia-Georgia war in August.

Participants discussed "in a positive spirit" security and humanitarian issues in two informal working groups, said Pierre Morel, the EU special envoy who chaired the two-day meeting.

"But despite last-minute talks, we are unable to reach agreement today," Morel told a press conference at the UN Office in Geneva, where the meeting was convened.

He said the participants would continue to work towards an agreement at the next round of meeting, which is scheduled for Feb. 17-18 2009.

The Geneva meeting was jointly sponsored by the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, with a purpose to explore a security mechanism and ways to help people who fled homes due to the Aug. 8- 12 war over Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Present at the discussions were representatives from the three sponsors, Russia, Georgia and the United States.

Georgia's two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were unilaterally recognized as independence by Russia following the August war, also sent delegations.

According to Morel, the participants were engaged in constructive discussions on "proposals for joint incidents prevention and response mechanisms."

Despite the lack of a final agreement, the participants "agreed on principles in broad terms on participants in the mechanisms, and on the implementation of them," he said.

Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general's special envoy for Georgia also tried to give a positive assessment of the talks.

"Real work has been carried out in the two days ... the focus of attention went to looking at mechanisms to prevent and resolve incidents as they arise," said Johan Verbeke, who co-chaired the meeting.

"Out of the eight to 10 outstanding questions on the table, only two questions remain," he added, referring to the progress participants made toward the establishment of the security mechanisms.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gregory Karasin described the discussions as "very important and useful."

But he admitted that there were many problems unresolved, and in some cases the discussions were "very heated" due to the sensitiveness of each side, namely Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Geneva dialog process was started on Oct. 15, but suspended after only half a day, during which Russian and Georgian delegations even refused to sit in the same room because of their sharp differences on the status of Georgia's two breakaway regions.

The second round of talks last month were described by the EU and the UN as constructive and positive, during which all delegations stayed in the same room and they began to touch concrete issues such as security and refugees.

(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2008)