The E.U., which has taken a tough line to Russia's actions in Georgia, should remain firm to be a credible negotiator while tempering the tone of some of its eastern Europe members, some analysts said Sunday.
The French European presidency upped its diplomatic role Sunday by sending foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to the region to push a European peace plan.
"Our task is clear...we must find the means for an immediate ceasefire, accepted by both sides," Kouchner said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. "We must talk about negotiations and a political solution, there is no military solution."
The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, medical access to victims, controlled withdrawals of troops on both sides and eventual political talks, Kouchner told journalists after the meeting.
Kouchner, who was accompanied by Alexander Stubb, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, was to travel to Moscow Monday where he hoped to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
France also called a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in Brussels Wednesday for talks that will be dedicated to the Russia-Georgia conflict.
The E.U. presidency Saturday, held by France until the end of the year, warned that Russia's military actions against Georgia could affect ties.
The E.U. "strongly states its commitment to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia and its internationally recognized borders and urges Russia to respect them," the bloc said in a statement.
Celine Francis, Georgian specialist at Belgium's VUB university, believes the E.U. should maintain the tough tone despite Russia's growing world stature and Europe's high reliance on Russian energy supplies.
"There is a change of tone, warnings that have not been issued before," Francis said.
"If the European Union stays firm then Russia will probably be more inclined to listen," she added.
However, Russia also can 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 satellites that now are fellow E.U. members and are fearful of renewed Russian influence in the region.
Poland and the Baltic states - E.U. members since 2004 - called for a revision Saturday of Europe's cooperation with Moscow, which they accuse of new imperialism.
Poland Sunday went further, calling for the E.U. to send a stabilization force to the embattled south Caucasus region, with foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski claiming France and Germany support the idea.
At the last North Atlantic Treaty Organization 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 isn't stable and would be a dangerous nation to bring into the fold of NATO, Francis said.
European parliament member Vytautas Landsbergis, vice-chair of the parliament's south Caucasus delegation wants the E.U. 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 E.U.-U.S.-OSCE mission already has traveled to Georgia in an attempt to broker a ceasefire.
Aude Merlin, Caucasus specialist at Brussels' Universite Libre, warned, however, that the E.U.'s role as an honest broker may not be helped by working in tandem with the Moscow's old Cold War foe the U.S.