Avignon, France  - The European Union is set to give formal go-ahead to a team of ceasefire observers for Georgia at a meeting of foreign ministers on September
15, diplomats meeting in the French town of Avignon said Friday.

"All the decisions will be taken on September 15 that we go for full deployment of an European Security and Defence Policy mission in Georgia," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said at an informal meeting with EU counterparts.

"I would expect that to start deploying in numbers in the second half of September, up to a force of several hundred, I would estimate," he said.

Since the war between Russia and Georgia started in August, the EU has been pushing for an international presence to replace the current massive Russian military force in Georgia's breakaway provinces.

But Russia's continued military presence not only in the provinces but in Georgia itself, and its refusal to let observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) back into the conflict zones, has put that goal out of reach so far.

On Monday EU heads of state and government called on Russia to pull its troops back to pre-conflict lines. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to travel to Moscow on Monday as the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency to hold talks on that issue.

"I have been in touch with the authorities (in Russia) and with the Georgians. I think they understand what we want, what they have to do, and I hope very much that on Monday there will be a success," the EU's top foreign-policy official, Javier Solana, who is also set to join the mission, said.

"I do have information that the OSCE observers are called into the so-called buffer zones (within Georgia). So this is some opening there and I hope that will continue," he said.

EU officials are as yet uncertain how far any mission would be able to deploy in Georgia.

"Our forces should be on the border (between Georgia and its breakaway regions), not somewhere which might be 15 kilometres inland," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said.

But with the EU's leaders having threatened to postpone talks on a strategic treaty with Russia until it pulls out of Georgia, they are unlikely to take a soft line.

"They (the Russians) are not the ones to give people permission to people in the buffer zone. They have no rights either to give permission or not to give it," Bildt said.

"We will deploy our mission to Georgia without asking Russia for permission," he said. (dpa)