By Xinhua,
Brussels/Moscow : Leaders from the 27 EU member countries will gather for an emergency meeting in Brussels on Monday to discuss relations with Russia in light of the Georgia crisis.
Western countries have denounced Russia’s August 26 decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states as “irresponsible.”
They also criticized Moscow’s response to Georgia’s August 8 attack on South Ossetia as “disproportionate,” and have said that Russia is failing to keep to the terms of the so-called Medvedev-Sarkozy peace plan by keeping peacekeepers in buffer zones in Georgia.
A number of member states, including Britain and Poland, have called for sanctions against Moscow, as well as the postponement of talks on a new partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Sunday in an article in the Observer newspaper for a review of relations with Russia.
“In the light of Russian actions, the EU should review – root and branch – our relationship with Russia,” he wrote.
Berlin has warned against escalating the dispute, while Italy, Belgium and Spain oppose the idea of establishing an anti-Russian block. EU envoys failed to reach a compromise on Russia ahead of the summit.
Moscow said that it hoped that “common sense” would prevail at the EU meeting.
“Ahead of the summit we can hear some EU members demand that Russia be punished, sanctions imposed against it, and an anti-Russian coalition formed,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
“Nevertheless,” he went on, “we are counting on common sense to prevail over emotions, and on the EU leaders finding the strength within themselves to refrain from a unilateral assessment of the conflict and come out with an independent, objective estimate of the situation and the reasons behind it.”
Speaking about the current crisis on the Russian Vesti channel on Sunday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that, “We are behaving in an absolutely moral way and in the framework of all existing international laws.”
“And so, if any of the European countries wish to serve someone else’s foreign interests – go ahead, we cannot insist otherwise,” the former Russian president said.
Putin had earlier accused the White House of provoking the conflict in Georgia in order to give an advantage to “one of” the U.S. presidential candidates.
Washington has denied the allegation.