Europe, U.S. to send ceasefire mission to Georgia

PARIS (Reuters) - Envoys from the European Union, the United States and the OSCE, Europe's main rights body, will travel to Georgia to try to broker a ceasefire in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, EU president France said on Friday.

Russian armored vehicles entered the northern edges of the region's capital, the separatists' press service reported on its website, as fighting escalated.

Moscow said its troops were responding to a Georgian assault to re-take South Ossetia. Georgia's pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili said the two countries were at war.

"It has been decided that envoys from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union and the United States will travel to Georgia to reach a ceasefire as quickly as possible," France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, said in a statement.

U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said earlier the United States would send an envoy to the region but did not name the representative nor give a departure time.

State Department officials said Washington was consulting with European allies about the possibility that a group of mediators could get involved.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by William Schomberg)