Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has offered to hold an international conference in Rome to solve the Russia-Georgia crisis, he said Monday.
The minister said NATO, the United Nations, the European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would be invited to attend along with Russia and Georgia.
Frattini said Italy was well placed to hold the conference due to its ''recognition and appreciation for both parties''.
Earlier on Monday Frattini expressed Italy's ''great concern'' over the Russian parliament's decision to recognise the independence of breakaway Georgian provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and said he was thankful that the Russian government had not yet acted on the decision.
In a phonecall with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov he also repeated Italy's conviction that Russia must not break ties with NATO.
Frattini said he would visit Moscow ahead of an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers on September 5-6 in Avignon, France.
Fighting flared on August 7 when Georgia sent its army to regain control of South Ossetia - a region nominally part of Georgia, but with de facto independence and where a majority of people hold Russian passports.
Russia moved in forcefully, sending troops into South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgian towns away from the two regions were also bombed and Russian tanks rolled halfway down its small neighbour.
The EU peace plan requires Georgia and Russia to return to pre-conflict positions but allows Russia to patrol a temporary limited buffer zone between Georgia and South Ossetia.
But Moscow now says it will not accept the presence of OSCE foreign troops patrolling buffer zones.
Russian troops have also failed so far to completely withdraw into the buffer zones in the EU peace plan, instead claiming much wider security zones around both provinces.
