EU readies Georgia monitors

AVIGNON, France (Reuters) - The European Union said on Friday it was "practically ready" to send about 200 civilian monitors to Georgia, while Germany and Italy led calls for an inquiry into the outbreak of the South Ossetia conflict.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the bloc was close to agreeing a civilian monitoring mission which the EU hopes will help convince Russia to withdraw its forces to pre-conflict lines in the country.

"This is practically ready," Solana told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Avignon, France.

"The only thing is to see when, how, at what moment, and under what mandate, and that point will be decided after Monday," Solana said, referring to a trip by the French leader to Moscow next week.

A French diplomat said the plan was to start deploying the first elements of a 200-strong force from October, initially in core Georgia but moving progressively into South Ossetia.

"The Russians said they would not move as long as there is not an international mechanism in place. We must tell them that the Europeans are ready to deploy ... that is what (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy will say to the Russians on Monday," the diplomat said.

The aim of the EU mission would be to verify that all parties stick to the terms of a French-brokered peace deal and watch over the thousands of people displaced by the conflict as they seek to return to their homes, officials said.

Moscow has kept troops in "security zones" on Georgian territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another rebel region.

EU leaders warned the Kremlin this week they could postpone talks due this month on an EU-Russia partnership pact, but avoided tougher sanctions amid internal divisions on how to deal with Europe's largest energy supplier.

WHO TO BLAME?

The EU and the United States have condemned Moscow's actions in South Ossetia as disproportionate, but some Western officials were dismayed by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to solve the long-frozen conflict with military force.

"The question of who participated, and with what motives, in the escalation to armed conflict is important as we consider future ties with the conflict parties -- and I mean both Georgia and Russia," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said before the EU meeting on Friday.

He said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitors in Georgia, had information about the run-up to conflict.

Italy's Franco Frattini added his backing for an inquiry.

"I spoke about this idea with both the Russian Federation and Georgia. Both told me they are not against. There are good possibilities to launch it," he said. Austria and Luxembourg also explicitly supported the idea.

Georgia's leaders say they sent their forces into South Ossetia -- a region recognised by nearly all foreign countries as Georgian territory -- in response to what they called repeated armed provocations by Russia and its separatist allies.

The Georgian conflict sparked calls from some EU capitals for the bloc to deepen ties with other countries in the region, notably Ukraine, which like Georgia has sought rapprochement with the West.

The collapse this week of the ruling coalition of Ukraine's pro-West President Viktor Yushchenko has thrown new questions over a long-scheduled EU-Ukraine summit in Evian next Tuesday.

"We have a very fundamental relationship, a very profound relationship with Ukraine. They have now demanded that we deepen that relationship. We are going to do it," said Solana.

But several ministers said it was too early to offer any membership pledge to Ukraine.

(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy and Yves Clarisse in Avignon, Kerstin Doerr in Berlin; Editing by Janet Lawrence)