By Lachlan Carmichael

Activists from Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia charged Tuesday that the US State Department has dropped talks with them under pressure from Georgia that included false charges of spying.

The activists say they are the first delegation from the Russian-backed region to visit Washington, an ally of Georgia, since a brief war in August pitting separatists and Russian forces against Georgian troops.

The State Department confirmed that it canceled a meeting in Washington last week with Lira Tskhovrebova, who chairs the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights, but said it still hoped to meet with them.

The department wants to "get a good sense of what the human rights situation is and what the situation is on the ground" from Tskhovrebova and her group but no time has yet been set, the department's deputy spokesman Robert Wood said.

Saylor Company, a public relations firm organizing the group's visit, told AFP that not only had group members received no word of a new meeting but there was little time to fit one in before they leave Washington on Friday.

Speaking through a translator, Tskhovrebova told a press conference that she and her colleagues met last week with US Congressional staff and other policymakers to warn them about the risks of aiding Tbilisi.

She said the policymakers made no promises to a request for them to open hearings into claims that Georgia started the war in South Ossetia and to ensure US aid is used for humanitarian rather than military purposes.

"It was important to me that they were listening to me and I saw sympathy in their eyes," she said.

"The only disappointment for me was when the State Department, under pressure from the Georgian side, canceled the meeting which was planned with us," she said.

She also charged that Georgia planted a false accusation that she is a KGB agent in a bid to sabotage the visit.

A US news report said that Georgian intelligence had given it secretly recorded coversations of Tskhovrebova apparently talking about "assignments, money and information" with a man it identified as a KGB agent.

Tskhovrebova welcomed news reports last month that independent monitors question Georgia's claim that war broke out with Russia in August when it defended against separatist and Russian attacks in South Ossetia.

She said US and other international donors would have thought twice about pledging billions of billion dollars in aid for Georgia if they knew there was a risk it could bolster what she calls an aggressive military.

The State Department said Georgia has so far got about 310 million dollars of the one billion dollars pledged in US aid. "All of the assistance is subject to standard US government monitoring and oversight," it added in a statement.

Staff for Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs a panel overseeing foreign aid, met Tskhovrebova's group, Leahy spokesman David Carle told AFP without providing any details.