UPDATE 2-Russia seeks bids to supply two helicopter ships

* Confirmation comes amid lengthy talks with France

* Defence chief says Moscow wants two warships for now

* Tender may be Moscow's ploy to win better Mistral terms

* Multifunctional ships may be sent to Far East, not Georgia (Adds analyst comments throughout)

By Denis Dyomkin

YEREVAN, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Russia will hold an international tender for the supply of two helicopter-carrying warships, Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Friday.

Serdyukov said the military intends to pick a supplier of the ships, which Moscow has said would have helped in its conflict with ex-Soviet Georgia in 2008, by the end of the year.

"We are talking about two ships for the time being," Serdyukov told reporters in the Armenian capital, where he was accompanying Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia has been in talks with France for months on a deal for Mistral class helicopter carriers, but Serdyukov said this year that it was also in preliminary discussions with Spain and the Netherlands.

The makers of the Mistral are welcome to participate in the tender on equal terms with other bidders, he said on Friday. Mistral is built by French naval shipyard DCNS, a quarter owned by defence electronics group Thales (TCFP.PA).

Serdyukov spoke a day after Russian media cited officials at Russia's state-run United Shipbuilding Corporation as saying his ministry planned to hold a tender for the helicopter-carriers, inviting both foreign and Russian shipbuilders.

Serdyukov said the tender had already been announced.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told shipyard workers last month that France would build two of the ships for Russia. A shipyard executive said at the time that the deal was expected to be sealed by the end of the year.

On Thursday, the French president's office said negotiations were going well and it was not concerned by the latest developments.

MOSCOW'S PLOY?

Some analysts view the tender as a form of Moscow's mild pressure on Paris in an attempt to win better conditions to buy Mistral ships from France.

"One should not exclude that holding such a tender may target a better price, better terms (of the deal) and, finally, a handover of technologies (by France)," Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Moscow-based defence thinktank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, told Reuters.

He estimated that the purchase of two Mistral ships from France could cost up to 800 million euros ($1.03 billion).

He added, however, that "it is still a big question why Russia's navy would need multifunctional ships like these ones".

Makiyenko said that while they are routinely called helicopter-carriers -- designed for around 16 helicopters -- these vessels were primarily fleet command centres, as well as large hospitals and floating barracks able to accommodate a battalion of marines.

Talks have been complicated by Russia's hopes of acquiring the ships with weapons technology -- a prospect the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe has said would cause concern.

Russia's Baltic Sea neighbours in NATO have expressed concern about Moscow's efforts to acquire the French vessel.

Georgia has protested at Moscow's plans to buy helicopter-carriers, fearing another conflict with Russia.

Moscow deployed military bases in Georgia's rebel regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after recognising them as independent states.

"Russia would badly need such multifunctional ships in its far-flung regions with rundown infrastructure, first of all in the Pacific in its Far East, but not in the Black Sea or the Baltics," Makiyenko said.

He said Georgian fears were "absolutely senseless", given pro-Moscow Abkhazia's natural access to the Black Sea.

"Russia does not need any landing ships in the Black Sea," he said. "If only because it already has an unsinkable aircraft-carrier there called Abkhazia." (Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Alison Williams)