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The German embassy in Tbilisi has identified Irakli Alasania (pictured)as "the hope" of Georgia and ensured he was invited to this year's Munich security conference - where he has been "one of the stars" of young leaders' discussions reports leading German TV network ZDF.

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is not attending this year's event but his press team have strongly denied this is because he has not been invited. They said he had been personally invited by the director but as he was "too busy" he would instead attend Barrack Obama's arms reduction conference in April.

Alasania told the young leaders debates that Georgia needed to strengthen its diplomatic hand and not look to force as a means of settling its disputes with Russia.

Describing the August War of 2008 - when Russian forces invaded Georgia in response to a Georgian attempt to crush Russian-sponsored separatists - as a disaster "for all sides", the former Georgian ambassador to the UN stated: "weapons only deepen the problems - that is why we must strengthen our means of diplomacy, we need dialogue rather than force of arms."

Update: We have update the story to better reflect the sequence of invitations and refusals as stated by Mikheil Saakashvili's team.