EU displays unity on Russia but not strength

EU leaders managed to overcome their differences over Russia at an emergency summit on Georgia but are still in a relatively weak position in handling Moscow, analysts said Tuesday.
The main result of the extraordinary European Union summit Monday was the freezing of talks with Russia on a new strategic partnership pact as long as Russian troops remain in the heart of Georgian territory.
The summit was hailed in Brussels as a triumph of European unity, overcoming differences of opinion which pitted the likes of Britain and Poland -- more hardline in their stance to Moscow -- against France, Germany and Italy -- less inclined to jeopardise ties with a resurgent and energy-rich Russia.
The EU summiteers also agreed that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the main player in Europe's diplomacy efforts, would travel to Moscow and Tbilisi on Monday for talks.
However Tanguy Struye, senior researcher at the Belgium-based Centre for Studies on Conflicts and Crises, saw the moves as displaying Russian strength more than European unity.
The freezing of talks and the Sarkozy visit "don't put Russia under pressure, on the contrary it shows that the Russians are back. It's us who are going to try to talk with the Russians, it's us who are asking for things and the Russians are delighted," he told AFP.
"The (Europeans) hid their divisions yesterday. The talks suspension was a minimum compromise, not an enormously courageous diplomatic move".
In any case the existing trade and cooperation pact with Russia, which was drawn up in 1997, will trundle on in the absence of a successor.
Natalia Keshchenko, a Russia expert at Global Insight, echoed that Moscow will see the glass as at least half full as the 27 EU nations stopped short of imposing any real sanctions.
"For Russia ... this is celebrated as, if not a full victory then at least a diplomatic success for them because they managed to convince their European partners that trade sanctions would not be beneficial to either side," she said.
Russia took military action last month after Georgian troops entered the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Despite signing a French-brokered peace plan, Russian troops have since failed to withdraw to their former positions and Moscow has recognised both South Ossetia and its fellow Georgian breakaway Abkhazia.
The EU leaders, in their summit statement, decried Russia's action as "unacceptable" and said their relations "have reached a crossroads".
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland, one of Russia's staunchest critics within the EU, went further, trumpeting that Europe was on "the cusp of history" and that if there was to be some kind of Second Cold War "we will win it. As Europe we are 10 times richer in resources, and sources of power, than Russia."