EU leaders suspend Russian talks until troops withdraw


BRUSSELS - EU leaders decided at an emergency summit on Monday to freeze strategic partnership talks with Moscow until Russian troops withdraw from Georgia, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

"As long as the withdrawal of troops has not been respected, all meetings on the (EU-Russia) partnership accord are postponed," Barroso told journalists after the extraordinary summit on the Georgian crisis.

"We are postponing all of our meetings on the strategic partnership agreement," echoed President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.

The French leader said he would visit Moscow and Tbilisi next Monday with Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in an EU troika for talks on the crisis.

"This crisis means that we have to re-examine our relationship with Russia," Sarkozy said after chairing the summit in Brussels. "The meeting on September 8 is going to be crucial for relations between the EU and Russia."

Sarkozy brokered a six-point ceasefire agreement that ended the five-day war between Russia and Georgia in August.

But Russian forces have remained deep inside Georgian territory since their August 8 attack, well beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognised as independent last week in the face of Western condemnation.

"It is clear that in the light of recent events, we cannot continue as if nothing has happened," Barroso said.

EU-Russia relations are currently governed by a partnership accord that dates from 1997, when Russia was still suffering economically from the break-up of the Soviet Union.

After many delays, the EU and Russia finally launched negotiations in July for the new strategic partnership pact, which aims to update and upgrade the framework for their relations.

Russia's ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, speaking on the margins of the summit, was sanguine at the decision to put on hold talks which had hardly begun.

"We've had to wait 18 months for the EU to get itself ready," he said. "We don't need these talks or this new agreement any more than the EU does."

The suspension of the talks was a goal much sought by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He left the summit without talking to reporters, but a British official said he was "satisfied with the results".

Poland, which also sought a firm EU line, voiced approval as well.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which along with several other member states has been keen not to ruin ties with a resurgent and energy-rich Russia, hailed what she called "a signal of unity from Brussels".

In a joint summit statement, the European leaders said relations with Russia "have reached a crossroads," and they urged Moscow "not to isolate itself from Europe."

Their statement condemned Russia's "disproportionate reaction" in Georgia, and argued that a military solution to the crisis was not acceptable.

They voiced support for Georgia, promised help with reconstruction and agreed to send a "fact-finding mission" immediately -- with the possibility later of "an increased European Union commitment on the ground".

The EU leaders also committed to organising an international donors conference to drum up aid for Georgia's reconstruction following Russia's invasion last month.

The summit was the first chance for the leaders to discuss the crisis since Russia entered Georgia on August 8, one day after Georgia's bid to bring the breakaway South Ossetia region back under central control.

To coincide with the extraordinary EU summit, the first since the Iraq war in 2003, huge crowds of Georgians rallied against Russia's occupation, in what officials said was the biggest protest in the ex-Soviet republic's history.