EU shies away from sanctions on Russia

The EU will not impose sanctions against Russia at Monday's emergency summit on the Georgia crisis, backing away from an economic confrontation with its largest energy supplier, officials said yesterday.

Moscow has for days taunted the 27-nation EU over its failure to match tough verbal condemnations of Russia's intervention in breakaway South Ossetia with action, arguing that any breakdown in relations would hurt Europe more. EU leaders are instead due to state that ties with Russia are "under observation" and emphasise their readiness to help Georgia with reconstruction, to offer Tbilisi a free-trade deal and ease visa restrictions on its citizens.

"At the current stage, we do not expect any sanctions to be decided by the European Council," a senior French diplomat, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters ahead of the half-day summit in Brussels. It remained unclear, however, whether a second round of negotiations on a wide-ranging new partnership between the EU and Russia would go ahead as planned on September 15-16, with some countries saying it made sense to postpone the talks.

Yet with a solid core of states including France, Germany and Italy resisting sanctions, even previous backers of a tougher line such as the ex-Soviet Baltic states, Poland and Britain were softening their tone for the sake of EU unity.

"We should not be looking for ways to punish Russia," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas told reporters in Vilnius.