(BRUSSELS) - EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner supported on Friday the possibility of international mediation to avert armed conflict between Russia and Georgia.

"We see that there is maybe an armed conflict if we don't defuse these tensions there," she told a conference at Brussels think-tank the European Policy Centre.

The commissioner suggested that something like the "quartet" of international powers for peace in the Middle East was needed to bring together Georgia and Russia along with other parties such as the EU and the OSCE.

She said such an arrangement "could give opportunity to Georgia and Abkhazia to talk to each other directly, because until now they barely have talked to each other."

But in the short term, Russia and Georgia needed to be convinced to "tone down the rhetoric."

The United States revealed Thursday it was pushing for a high-level meeting involving Europe, Russia and Georgia over the next few weeks in a bid to revive direct Georgia-Abkhaz peace talks.

Tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi have soared over violence in the past week in Abkhazia, one of two regions that broke from Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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