New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged the implementation of the ceasefire arrangement between Georgia and Russia negotiated by the French presidency of the European Union.

Ban called for an end to the hostilities and the withdrawal of forces to the positions held before the conflict erupted Thursday in South Ossetia, a de-facto independent Georgian enclave inhabited by ethnic Russians.

Washington  - US President George W Bush said Wednesday that Russia has placed its integration into the international diplomatic and economic system at "risk" by its military campaign in Georgia.

Bush accused Russia of continuing military operations inside of Georgia despite a ceasefire agreed to on Tuesday, and called on Moscow to ensure humanitarian aid be allowed into the country.

Damascus  - Overshadowed by a bloody terror bombing in northern Lebanon, Syrian President Basher al-Assad and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman began Wednesday a two-day summit being dubbed by many commentators in the region as "historic."

It is the first top-level meeting between the two countries since the February 2005 car bomb assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri which triggered the pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon that same year.

Warsaw  - Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and his Baltic counterparts called for a NATO action plan for Georgia on Wednesday, saying membership is the only way to prevent future "aggression and occupation" after the recent Russia-Georgia conflict.

The leaders were also critical of a recent French peace proposal for Moscow and Tbilisi, saying it was missing a point on respecting Georgia's "territorial integrity."

Seoul - South Korean President Lee Myung Bak asked China Wednesday to continue playing an active role in finding a solution for the North Korean nuclear dispute, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

Meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Seoul, Lee also expressed hope that Beijing would help improve relations between the two Koreas, the agency said.

China's President Hu Jintao plans to visit Seoul at the end of August.

Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to travel to Tbilisi to lend her backing to efforts to end hostilities in Georgia, her official spokesman said Wednesday.

Merkel also said that the time was not right for allocating blame in the conflict that erupted in the breakaway region of South Ossetia last week.

"The chancellor is firmly convinced that this is not the time for looking into motives, for allocating blame, for denouncing anyone or for making final judgements," Merkel's official spokesman, Thomas Steg, said.