UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan paid a brief visit to Georgia Saturday and held talks with President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose government is grappling with the issue of the breakaway Black Sea province of Abkhazia.

The UN chief, who flew in from Islamabad, Pakistan, will leave Georgia shortly after his meeting with Saakashvili in the capital city of Tbilisi, reports reaching here said.

Annan has repeatedly urged the Georgian government and the Abkhaz separatists to seek a lasting political settlement to the hostilities which started between them in the early 1990s.

In July, he appealed to both sides to seize the emerging opportunities for dialogue and to make the best use of the involvement of the international community, particularly after the resumption of UN-led peace talks that had been stalled for more than eight months.

He also asked the Abkhaz side to accept the deployment of the UN mission's civilian police officers in the Gali district and to permit the opening of a human rights sub-office there.

In accordance with Annan's recommendation, the United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved a six-month extension of the mandate of the 10-year-old UN mission in Georgia until Jan. 31, 2006.

Separatist fighters in Abkhazia drove out Georgian forces in the mid-1990s. Some 16,000 people were killed in the war over Abkhazia and 300,000, mostly ethnic Georgians, were forced to flee their homes.

Source: Xinhua