Luke Bryan and Miranda Lambert won big Sunday as Nashville's biggest names took over Las Vegas for the 48th Academy of Country Music awards.

Bryan, 36, was overcome with emotion as Shania Twain presented him with the fan-voted entertainer of the year award at the climax of a three-hour nationally televised gala that he co-hosted with Blake Shelton.

Russia's security council chief Nikolai Patrushev said Tuesday he did not see any grounds for a popular uprising in the country but warned the Kremlin would not allow opposition protests to wreak havoc.

"In today's Russia there are no preconditions for possible 'color' revolutions and we are certain that we will not allow the realization of such scenarios in our country," Patrushev told tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Georgia said Monday that it wants to end "confrontation" with Russia after the ex-Soviet foes held their first direct talks since they fought a brief war in 2008.

"It is not possible to remain in perpetual confrontation with Russia," Tbilisi's special representative for Russia, Zurab Abashidze, told a news conference after returning from talks in Switzerland on Friday with Moscow's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin.

Georgia expressed disappointment Wednesday after its latest round of U.N.-mediated talks with Russia, blaming Moscow for blocking discussions on people displaced during the countries' brief war in 2008.

"I have to say we are deeply disappointed that our counterparts did not approach this meeting in good faith," Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nikoloz Vashakidze told reporters in Geneva.

Georgia and Russia are to hold their first direct diplomatic talks since the arch-foes severed ties after the 2008 war over the separatist region of South Ossetia, Georgia's foreign minister said Monday.

Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili's special representative for Russia Zurab Abashidze will meet Russian diplomats "this week in Europe," Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze told journalists.

Georgian police on Saturday questioned a former prime minister over the alleged use of a fake passport, further raising tensions between the government and President Mikheil Saakashvili, who says his allies are being persecuted.

"An investigation was opened into the use of a forged document and an attempt of illicit crossing of the state border," an interior ministry statement said.

Georgia said Tuesday it had doubled the number of troops deployed to fight with NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to over 1,500 as the ex-Soviet state's new government continues its bid to join the alliance.

Georgia now has 1,570 troops serving there, making the small Caucasus country of 4.5 million people the largest non-NATO contributor to the Afghanistan mission, the defense ministry said.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Wednesday nominated his rival Bidzina Ivanishvili as prime minister after the tycoon's coalition defeated the president's ruling party in polls this month.

"The leader of the coalition which won the October 1 parliamentary elections, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has been selected for the post of prime minister," Saakashvili's spokeswoman Manana Manjgaladze told a news conference.

Top officials from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's party met with opponents from the Georgian Dream coalition Friday for the first time since the opposition bloc's shock election victory.

The talks are aimed at smoothing a rare peaceful transfer of power in the ex-Soviet state after billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili's bloc unexpectedly defeated Saakashvili's ruling party on Monday after a venomous campaign.

Georgia's Bidzina Ivanishvili said Thursday he had a plan but no date to make Washington his first foreign destination should he become prime minister as expected.

The announcement seemed designed to discredit claims that Ivanishvili, who is tipped to become premier after winning parliamentary polls on Monday, was working on behalf of Russia, a longtime foe which defeated Georgia in a brief 2008 war.