French FM: EU and Russia to resume talks

International Herald Tribune.The European Union plans to resume talks on a major political and economic cooperation agreement with Russia at a summit next month, the French foreign minister said Tuesday.

Bernard Kouchner says that the talks are to resume at a Russia-EU summit in Nice, France, set for Nov. 13-14. The EU put the talks on hold after Russia's war with Georgia in August. Some EU members have balked at restarting them because of Russia's failure to fully comply with a EU-brokered peace deal.

The existing 10-year Russia-EU partnership agreement signed in 1997 was automatically renewed pending delays on reaching a new one, but the old deal has lost much of its relevance due to Russia's energy wealth and its increasingly assertive foreign policy.

The EU has been pushing Russia to accept its terms on energy policy, security and rights. Russia has resisted.

Kouchner said talks on the new deal will be held "unless some unforeseen circumstances emerge."

"As of now, there haven't been such circumstances," he said at a news conference after Russia-EU consultations in St. Petersburg.

Russia says it has fully met its pledge to withdraw its forces from areas outside Georgia's breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The EU has deployed its monitors to the areas after the Russian pullout.

But Georgia has accused the Kremlin of breaking its commitments by failing to withdraw from areas which had been under Georgian control before the August war. It also said that Russia has violated the peace deal by deploying 3,800 troops to each breakaway region — a much bigger presence than before the war.

Kouchner said in an interview published in the business daily Kommersant on Tuesday that the war in Georgia caused a "colossal crisis" in Russia-EU relations.

He credited Moscow with generally keeping its promises under the peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but added that Russia's intention to keep large numbers of troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and their presence in the town of Akhalgori contradicted the peace deal.

The war in Georgia has badly strained Russia's relations with the United States and the EU, which have criticized Moscow for disproportionate use of force and its decision to recognize the independence of Georgia's breakaway provinces.

The war erupted when Georgia launched an attack to regain control of South Ossetia, which broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s. Russian forces swiftly repelled the attack and drove deep into Georgia. Georgian officials said they launched an attack after the Russian troops had moved across the border — a claim Russia has denied.

He said that a $4.5 billion aid package for Georgia pledged by international donors in Brussels last week was necessary to rebuild the damage caused by the Russian attack.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Moscow was concerned that some of the funds could be used to rebuild the battered Georgian military.