(Adds comment by Georgian prime minister in paragraph 17) By Patrick Worsnip UNITED NATIONS, April 10 (Reuters) - Russia and the United States clashed sharply over Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on Tuesday as the United Nations Security Council debated renewing a U.N. mission in the Caucasus state. Russia's U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters the United States had made a "serious diplomatic and political mistake" in refusing to allow Abkhazia's "foreign minister" to come to New York. U.S. officials denied they had turned down a formal visa request by the minister, and U.S. ambassador Alejandro Wolff accused Churkin of a "mischievous effort" to create "false analogies" between Abkhazia and Serbia's troubled Kosovo region. Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, broke away from Georgia in 1993 after the Soviet Union collapsed, when separatists, backed by mercenaries and arms from Russia's northern Caucasus region, drove out Tbilisi's troops. Moscow, which has frayed relations with Georgia, props up the region by paying pensions, issuing Russian passports and allowing cross-border traffic. A U.N. military and police observer mission in Georgia, currently 142-strong, has monitored the situation since 1993. Its current six-month mandate will expire on Friday. Abkhazia is not officially recognized by any country or international body, but Churkin took issue with Washington's decision not to let the Abkhaz minister, Sergei Shamba, come to the United States to address the Security Council. "This is clearly a fact of violating the spirit of the obligation of the host country," Churkin said. "We think it was a rather serious diplomatic and political mistake." The Security Council, he said, should listen to both sides. "As I mentioned in the Council meeting today, can you imagine what would be the situation ... if in the case of the Kosovo conflict, all those years the international community were listening only to the Serb side?" "MISCHIEVOUS EFFORT" Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO bombing drove out Serb forces. A U.N. plan, backed by the West but opposed by Russia's ally Serbia, proposes independence. In a statement distributed by Russian officials, Shamba himself attacked the Security Council for failing to consult both sides, "which makes us think that the UN has not become an equidistant party." But Wolff told reporters that of a six-nation group of "friends of Georgia" -- Russia, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Slovakia -- only Russia thought the time was ripe for Shamba to attend the United Nations. "We've heard ambassador Churkin today, as he has done previously, raise false analogies with Kosovo, in a mischievous effort to complicate that discussion," he said. U.S. embassy spokesman Richard Grenell contended the United States had not turned down a visa request by Shamba. Diplomats said Shamba had made no official visa application after receiving word that he would not be welcome. The Security Council adjourned without a decision on the U.N. mission, known as UNOMIG. A report on Abkhazia earlier this month by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a helicopter attack on March 11 on Georgian-controlled territory bordering Abkhazia had been a "major setback" to peace efforts. Russia's air force denied Georgian charges that the helicopters were Russian. Churkin said Moscow believed Georgia's armed presence in the area involved, the upper Kodori valley, "exceeds the limits of the reasonable." Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli, appearing later at an exhibit of photographs of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, said his country had only police in the area, which he said was its right.
