By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA, May 14 - Europe's top security and human rights watchdog on Thursday halted talks on keeping peace monitors in Georgia after Russia blocked a deployment plan, but it stood by the proposal and nudged Moscow to reconsider.

Russia sent in troops to crush Georgia's move to retake its separatist South Ossetia region in a war last August, then rejected an extension of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's 16-year-old monitoring mission in the former Soviet republic when it expired on Dec. 31. The military and civilian monitors face a June 30 deadline to pull out.

On Wednesday, Russia barred a revised monitoring proposal from OSCE chairman Greece by insisting on language driving home its view of South Ossetia as an "independent" state -- rejected by Georgia and not endorsed elsewhere in the 56-nation group.

U.S. and European Union officials regard an OSCE presence in Georgia as crucial to preventing further fighting between separatist and Georgian forces and mistreatment of civilians.

Greece's OSCE ambassador, Mara Marinaki, announced a suspension in five-month-old negotiations on a new OSCE presence in Georgia. But she said the current proposal remained on the table and she called for "strong political will" to accept it.

She made clear she would stick to an approach that omits mention of Georgia or South Ossetia and related political and geographic references -- skirting the hot-button issue of the separatist territory's status -- while stipulating free movement for monitors across the August ceasefire line.

"CRUCIAL" OSCE PRESENCE

"We need to review the results of our efforts to build the required consensus around the Greek proposal based on the 'status-neutral' formula that would allow the OSCE to continue its crucial work in Georgia," Marinaki said in a statement.

"We have repeatedly said we need more, not less, OSCE in the (Caucusus) region. We call on all participating states to show strong political will to this end."

Despite the suspension of the talks, "we remain hopeful that we will still be able to reach consensus soon", she added.

In Moscow, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry source as saying no final decision had been made and dialogue would go on but that Greece's plan "makes no sense".

"This plan is based on the premise that everything in the region remained the same after the Georgian aggression. But this plan won't work. Tskhinvali (South Ossetia's regional capital) will not let the observers enter its territory."

Greece's solution would leave Russia's quest for broad recognition of pro-Moscow South Ossetia's "independence" to be addressed at "status" talks in Geneva, while accommodating the insistence of Georgia and its Western allies on Georgian territorial integrity and a single OSCE mission in the country.

But Russia on Wednesday answered the Greek draft proposal with its own version that crossed out references to "free and unimpeded contact and movement" across the truce line.

Moscow's version said such movement must be agreed with "relevant authorities" -- meaning the rebels and Russians -- while monitors based in South Ossetia and in state-controlled Georgia would be under separate commands.

(Additional reporting by Conor Sweeney in Moscow; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LE904030.htm