Relations between Russia and Georgia, the ex-Soviet neighbors, strained over Moscow's alleged support for separatist movements in Georgian breakaway territories and trade disputes, hit a low point in September, with Tbilisi's brief detention of Russian officers on spying charges.
"We are glad that tensions in Georgia-Russia relations have eased. And it is important that we take certain steps to achieve an improvement in bilateral relations," Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists in Tbilisi after a meeting with his Georgian counterpart Gela Bezhuashvili in the Georgian capital.
The Novosti-Georgia agency said Bezhuashvili confirmed that they discussed bilateral relations and the role of the international community in normalizing them.
During the feud that followed the Russia-Georgia spying row, Moscow withdrew its diplomats, suspended transport and mail links and clamped down on 'illegal' Georgian businesses. Russia has since restored postal links with Georgia and returned its ambassador and diplomatic staff.
Steinmeier also said the Kosovo problem cannot be equated with conflicts in Georgia.
"Kosovo can be a new model. But it is a separate topic and cannot be applied to or equated with conflicts in Georgia," he said while answering a question from reporters on whether the Kosovo precedent could be applied in the settlement of conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Bezhuashvili said attempts to draw a parallel between Kosovo and Georgian conflicts are erroneous and dangerous.
Steinmeier said conflicts with unrecognized republics should be settled by political means, dialogue and on the basis of mutual trust.
Pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who swept into power on the back of a "color" revolution in 2003, has pledged to bring the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's control, and accuses Russia of backing separatists in the regions, a charge that Moscow denies.
Serbia's predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo province, which has a population of two million, has been a UN protectorate since NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia ended a war between Serb forces and Albanian separatists in 1999.
Russian officials have repeatedly said that granting sovereignty to Kosovo would set a precedent, and the international community would then have to recognize as independent the separatist regions in the former Soviet Union, notably Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Moldova's Transdnestr.
