The FINANCIAL — The EU, which has taken a tough line on Russia's actions in Georgia, needs to remain firm to be a credible negotiator — while tempering the tone of some of its eastern Europe members, according to analysts.
The French European presidency has upped its diplomatic role by sending Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to Georgia on August 10, accompanied by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe head Alexander Stubb. The pair are making for Moscow on August 11.
France has also called a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday for talks which will be dedicated to the Russia-Georgia conflict.
But having seized control of the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, Russian forces have ignored diplomatic warnings to intensify and widen its bombardment to the Georgian capital Tbilisi and another rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia.
According to EU,Celine Francis, Georgian specialist at Belgium's VUB university, believes the European Union should maintain the tough tone despite Russia's growing assertiveness and Europe's high reliance on Russian energy supplies.
"There is a change of tone, warnings that have not been issued before," Francis told AFP.
"If the European Union stays firm then Russia will probably be more inclined to listen," she added.
"However, Russia can also manipulate Europe not least through the direct bilateral ties it has built up with some member states," said Francis.
Resurgent Russia's economic heft, notably thanks to its energy supplies, "puts France and Germany in a delicate position," she said. And that worries the former Soviet satellite states which are now fellow EU members.
Fearful of renewed Russian influence, Poland and the Baltic states — EU members since 2004 — on Saturday called for a revision of Europe's cooperation with Moscow, which they accuse of new imperialism.
Poland on Sunday went further, calling for the European Union to send a stabilisation force to the embattled south Caucasus region, with foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski claiming France and Germany support the idea.
At the last NATO summit in April, France and Germany, supported by others, refused to offer Georgia or Ukraine candidate status for the alliance, sensitive to Russia's opposition to seeing the 26-member group push into its old sphere of influence.
By intervening in Georgia, Russia will be keen to show that its former satellite is not stable and would be a dangerous nation to bring into the fold of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, said Francis.
European parliament member Vytautas Landsbergis, vice-chair of the parliament's south Caucasus delegation, wants the EU to go further in the face of "the new Russian expansionist doctrine."
"If the European Union wants to be respected," it should freeze its talks on a new partnership agreement with Russia as well as the existing "common space" agreement, "until the Russian army leaves the territory of sovereign Georgia," the MEP said.
A joint EU-US-OSCE mission has already travelled to Georgia in an attempt to broker a ceasefire.
Aude Merlin, Caucasus specialist at Brussels' Universite Libre, warned however that the EU's role as an honest broker may not be helped by working in tandem with Moscow's old Cold War foe, the United States.
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