Luxembourg - European Union foreign ministers were Monday
due to discuss re-starting cooperation talks with Russia amid
disagreement over whether Moscow had fully complied with a peace deal
in Georgia.
Ministers arriving at their meeting in Luxembourg indicated that
reaching consensus on the strategic Partnership and Cooperation
Agreement (PCA) talks would be difficult.
'We have to take it fairly slowly,' said Finnish Foreign Minister
Alexander Stubb. 'I do not expect a decision (on the PCA) to be taken
today.'
Stubb chairs the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), which has a military monitoring operation in Georgia.
Last Thursday, OSCE monitors said Moscow had pulled its forces out
of the buffer zones adjacent to the separatist enclaves of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, one day ahead of the expiry of an October 10
deadline brokered by the EU and agreed by Russia and Georgia.
But OSCE officials said Russian troops were still present in the
Akhalgori area, prompting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to
say during a visit to Georgia on Friday that 'not everything has been
achieved.'
And while countries like Finland would like to see the PCA
negotiations resume 'as soon as possible,' Stubb said realism
dictated that any decision would not likely be taken much before an
EU-Russia summit scheduled to take place on November 10.
EU leaders agreed on September 1 to freeze the PCA talks as a
result of Russia's 'disproportionate use of force' in Georgia.
The freeze was to last 'until troops have withdrawn to the
positions held prior to 7 August,' the date Russia's war with Georgia
began.
EU civilian monitors are now patrolling the buffer zones.
But while some member states argue that Russia has successfully
complied with the conditions set out by the EU, others say talks
cannot re-start while Russia continues to maintain a substantial
military presence inside the two breakaway regions.
Divisions within the 27-member bloc have prompted the French
presidency of the EU to drop references to the talks resuming in
November in a preparatory document for Monday's meeting.
In Luxembourg, foreign ministers were also set to discuss whether
to lift or lighten their current visa bans on top Belarusian
officials as a response to Minsk's decision over the summer to
release its last political prisoners.
Officials say some EU member states are keen to encourage Belarus
to take a pro-Western path in the wake of the Georgian conflict, in
spite of the fact that the country's parliamentary elections, held on
September 28, were judged by international observers to be deeply
flawed.
No opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko succeeded in
winning any parliamentary seats.
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