By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council was meeting again on Friday to discuss the escalating fighting in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region and diplomats said they hoped the council would unanimously call for a ceasefire.

The 15-member council held a rare late-night emergency session on Thursday that ran into Friday morning, but was unable to agree on a statement that would have called on Georgia and separatists in South Ossetia to halt bloodshed.

Council diplomats said one phrase in it was unacceptable to the Georgians, backed by the United States and Europeans. That wording called on all sides in the conflict "to renounce the use of force," according to a draft of the text.

But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters before entering the council chambers that the five permanent council members -- Russia, China, Britain, France and the United States -- were close to an agreement on acceptable new wording.

Several council diplomats told reporters a new draft would have the council urging all parties to refrain from any further acts of violence -- language that would be a call for a ceasefire without precluding the Georgian government from using force to take control of its territory in the future.

Diplomats said there was consensus among Security Council members that the situation risked spinning out of control and that the body considered the world's supreme guardian of peace and security had a responsibility to get involved.

In South Ossetia, the separatists' press service reported on its website that Russian armored vehicles had entered the northern edges of the region's capital.

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 states were at war.

The crisis has fueled fears of full-blown war in the region, which is emerging as a vital energy transit route and where Russia and the West are vying for influence.

Russia backs the separatists who have controlled the region since a war in the early 1990s.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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