EU backs plan for peacekeepers for Georgia truce

(Updates with EU support for sending peacekeepers)

By Ingrid Melander and David Brunnstrom

BRUSSELS, Aug 13 (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers expressed broad support on Wednesday for sending EU peacekeepers to supervise a French-brokered ceasefire between Russia and Georgia in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia.

"The EU is ready to engage, including on the ground, to support the efforts of the United Nations and the OSCE ," Irish Development Minister Peter Power said after an emergency EU meeting in Brussels.

Power said the details about sending peacekeepers would be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in September.

Earlier on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who accompanied President Nicolas Sarkozy on his mission to broker a peace agreement in Moscow on Tuesday, said he was convinced Russia would accept a European presence.

The peacekeeping agreement was reached at a meeting of the 27 EU ministers as the guns fell silent in Georgia after a six-day war between Georgia and Russia which alarmed the West.

Despite eyewitness reports to the contrary from the region, Georgian Foreign Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili said on arrival in Brussels that Russia was still attacking the Georgian town of Gori, outside South Ossetia.

"Definitely, European monitors have to be on the ground. Europe has to get engaged physically on the ground and Europe has to stop that from happening," she told reporters.

But Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who visited Georgia for the pan-European Council of Europe, cast doubt on whether Moscow would allow European monitors into zones that it had held or captured.

"There are no signs of the Russians letting in anyone else," he said. "I don't really see it happening -- at the moment the Russians are firmly in control."

The United States meanwhile has requested a meeting of NATO foreign ministers over the situation in Georgia, which could take place possibly early next week, a NATO spokeswoman said.



RIFTS HIGHLIGHTED

The conflict highlighted EU rifts over how to deal with Russia which have dogged ties since the bloc's enlargement to embrace ex-communist central European states in 2004.

Poland and the Baltic states, wary of a resurgent Russia using its muscle to dominate neighbours, have condemned what they call Moscow's aggression against Georgia and want the EU to take a tough line.

Prior to the ministers' meeting, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the EU should decide next month "whether or not and how" to continue talks on closer ties with Moscow.

"The international community will want to ensure that the message goes out that force is not the right way to take forward these difficult issues," Miliband said as he arrived for the session.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas said there must be consequences for Russia's "unacceptable and unproportional" use of force.

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier Steinmeier retorted: "I see no point in us getting lost in a long debate today about responsibility for and origins of the escalation of the last few days.

"You can decide to make strong statements with one-sided condemnations, or you can look to the future and take a real role in stabilising the situation," he said.

U.S.-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who provoked Russian retaliation by sending Georgian troops to recapture the Moscow-backed rebel region last week, accepted Sarkozy's plan, lightly modified, late on Tuesday in Tbilisi. (Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Angus MacSwan)