Russia must stop blocking international monitors from going into Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region to assess reports of human rights abuses, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Friday, reported Reuters.
The monitors have been unable to return to the Moscow-backed region since a war in August between Russia and Georgia, and human rights groups say that in their absence ethnic Georgians are being harassed by the separatists.
"There is, unfortunately, a silence and darkness with respect to the international monitors that has descended on South Ossetia," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried told reporters at a security conference in Helsinki.
"The solution is hardly to keep monitors out of South Ossetia ... Russia has an obligation since it controls this territory to let in international observers."
Russia launched a counter-attack in August after Georgian troops tried to retake South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed region that threw off Tbilisi's rule in the 1990s.
Moscow said it was acting to prevent genocide of the region's population, but Western governments said its response -- including sending troops beyond South Ossetia and deep into Georgia -- was disproportionate.
The row over Georgia dragged diplomatic relations between Moscow and the United States to a post Cold War low.
A diplomatic source said differences mainly with Russia, including over Georgia, derailed attempts to agree a joint declaration at the annual conference of the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE has not agreed on a declaration since 2002.
"I just came from a meeting where the project (declaration) was brought to an end," the diplomat said.
Other points of difference with Russia were a major arms control treaty that the Kremlin has threatened to quit, and a lukewarm response to a Russian proposals for a new security pact for Europe, the diplomat said.
Under a ceasefire agreement, Russia committed to allow a small group of OSCE military observers access to South Ossetia, but that has not happened.
Diplomats say that in private discussions Russian officials maintain they have no objection to the OSCE monitors entering South Ossetia but the separatist authorities should be consulted -- an obstacle because most states do not recognize them.
