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Tbilisi hopes for meaningful discussion of Abkhaz conflict at UN

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TBILISI, January 23 (RIA Novosti) - Georgia hopes a meaningful discussion of ways to resolve its conflict with the breakaway region of Abkhazia can be had at an upcoming UN Security Council session, the post-Soviet Caucasus nation's foreign minister said Tuesday.

Gela Bezhuashvili said at a news conference that Georgian officials had submitted a report ahead of the Wednesday session outlining developments in the Kodori Gorge, a de facto border between Abkhazia and Georgia proper.

"At the UN hearing held at Georgia's initiative today, Deputy Foreign Minister Yekaterina Zguladze and our representatives delivered a report on the situation in the Kodori Gorge," he said.

"I believe the Security Council has been presented with a very clear picture of what is really happening [in the gorge and the conflict zone]. We therefore expect a constructive discussion [of the topic] at tomorrow's UN Security Council session."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon presented his own report on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict last week.

Bezhuashvili described the report as "a well-balanced document, containing assessments, provisions and recommendations the Georgian side has been advocating for several years." He said he was particularly referring to the highlighted need to "create conditions for the return of refugees and the protection of their rights."

Abkhazia broke away from Georgian government control in a bloody war in the early 1990s. Some 7,000 civilians of various ethnicities were killed in the war, according to official Georgian sources.

Abkhazia claimed that several thousand people died fighting for the region's independence, and that hundreds of thousands were displaced.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who swept into power on the back of a "color" revolution in 2003, has pledged to bring Abkhazia and its other breakaway region of South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's control.

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