Tbilisi/Brussels  - The Georgian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday welcomed proposals that the European Union play a stronger role in talks with the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia - an area where Russia is currently seen as the main powerbroker.

The ministry, in a statement said, it "has been informed" that EU members "agreed on the proposal to expand the EU's role in resolving the conflict in the Abkhazia region."

Diplomats in Brussels confirmed that EU representatives had presented ideas for the bloc to have a "bigger engagement" in the dispute between Georgia and Abkhazia at a meeting with the Georgian foreign minister on Monday, but said that concrete measures had not yet been discussed.

The idea is "still under discussion, not definitive," and the EU will only take any steps if the other players in the dispute agree to its involvement, an official in Brussels told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Even that tentative approach was welcomed in Tbilisi, however.

Georgia "welcomes this decision as an important step in strengthening the role of the international community in resolving the separatist conflict," the statement said.

"The EU's move will help break the discredited monopoly held by the Russian Federation in providing security on the ground and in facilitating the peace process," it said.

Georgia has been in conflict with its breakaway province since the early 1990s. Since 1994, Russia has maintained peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia and has provided most Abkhaz citizens with Russian passports.

However, since NATO leaders in April said that Georgia would join the alliance at an unspecified future date, tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow have flared, with each side accusing the other of breaching the 1994 ceasefire deal.

Earlier this summer, Russia moved several hundred military engineers into Abkhazia to mend a railway line - a move Georgia interpreted as a preparation for eventual annexation. (dpa)