Russia and Georgia made progress in resolving security and refugee issues at international talks here Wednesday but key disagreements were shelved and tensions remain in the wake of their August war, officials said.

`The three Caucasus countries have had an opportunity to communicate on an even footing,` said Grigory Karasin, Russia`s head of delegation and deputy foreign minister told journalists.

He was referring to Georgia and the two breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

`Now we can look forward with confidence that we can address all pertinent issues on the table,` Karasin said, adding that the talks were `direct, very pertinent and helped us clarify the positions of all the parties.`

The parties will gather again in Geneva on December 17-18 for more talks, he said.

A previous attempt broke up in embarrassing failure last month when Russian and Georgian delegates failed to even sit down in the same room amid disagreements on the presence of representatives from Georgian rebel regions.

This time around all parties agreed to informal sessions which allowed the presence of representatives from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Moscow-backed regions which were at the centre of the August 8-12 conflict, officials said.

`We have made a proper leap forward, we have left the sterile debates on procedures and engaged on debates of substance,` said Johan Verbeke, the UN`s chief envoy on Georgia.

The UN was the joint organiser of the Geneva talks along with the EU and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

However Verbeke conceded that thorny issues such as the independence or otherwise of the breakaway regions did not feature on the agenda.

Such issues are `heavy political questions on which no agreement in the very short term can be reached anyway,` he told journalists.

`We agreed to suspend those questions and in the meantime to address concrete issues which are directly related to the people themselves,` he added.

The UN, EU and OSCE secured agreement that a mission will be dispatched between now and the next round of talks to assess the situation of refugees and displaced people, said French diplomat Pierre Morel, representing the EU.

All the participants `recognised the necessity of allowing the return of displaced people in conditions of security and dignity,` he said.

Both Moscow and Tbilisi agreed that the situation on the ground remains of great concern although both blamed the other for the continuing tensions.

`All the participants have agreed that the security situation on the ground is dire,` said Giga Bokeria, deputy Georgian foreign affairs minister.

`There is a further threat of another wave of ethnic cleansing in those occupied territories ... and we have constant incidents in the so-called buffer zones: skirmishes, attacks, terrorist attacks, kidnappings, lootings,` he said.

For Russia, Karasin said that `we have serious concerns and questions about stability in the areas adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.`

Russian troops and tanks rolled into Georgia on August 8 to push back a Georgian offensive to retake South Ossetia.

Russia has since withdrawn from most of Georgia in line with an EU-brokered ceasefire but Tbilisi is furious at the continued presence of 7,600 Russian troops in the two breakaway regions.