The 27-nation bloc announced on September 1 that it had suspended talks on the pact with Russia over Moscow's presence in Georgia following a brief conflict over breakaway South Ossetia. The EU said it would not resume the talks until Russia pulled all its troops in Georgia back to their pre-conflict positions.
"We reiterate that under the continued occupation of Georgian territories it would be too early to resume talks on a new partnership agreement with Russia," Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski said in a joint statement on Monday ahead of an EU summit in Nice set for November 13-14.
The leaders called for the EU-Russia talks to be frozen until Russia had "fully" complied with a French-brokered peace plan: "We stress that negotiations on an EU-Russia agreement should be resumed only when Russia withdraws all its troops from Georgia to the positions held prior to August 7."
Although Moscow then completed its troop pullout from buffer zones in Georgia, questions remain over the scale of its presence in South Ossetia. Furthermore, some EU member-states said they wanted to see progress in talks on the future of South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia - recognized by Russia as independent states - before discussing relations with Moscow.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in an interview with the Kommersant business daily last week that restoring ties between Russia and the EU was not a "two-day issue," although he added that talks on the long overdue strategic cooperation agreement could still resume at the November summit in Nice.
Kouchner added that Moscow had on the whole complied with all the international commitments under the peace plan, although "a few disputable points remain."
The first round of talks on a new wide-ranging deal between Russia and the EU was held in July. The agreement is set to replace the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which was extended for a year when it expired in December 2007. The talks were delayed over disputes between Russia and EU members Poland and Lithuania. The second round of talks was due to take place on September 16.
