LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Georgia is calling for a United Nations’ peacekeeping force to intervene to halt its conflict with Russia, a Georgian diplomat said.

“The statements and expressions of good intentions didn’t work. We need a very, very forceful action,” Giorgi Badridze, acting head of the Georgian Embassy in London, said when asked what Georgia wanted the European Union to do to try to stop the crisis over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

“We need troops (on the) ground,” he told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.

“Let it be a U.N.-mandated international force, ideally EU,” he said.

R