Nice, France - The European Union and Russia are set to re-launch on December 2 talks on a strategic treaty which EU leaders froze in protest at Russia's August invasion of Georgia, officials said Friday.

The two sides' top negotiators are due to hold a fresh round of talks on December 2 in Brussels, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the fringes of an EU-Russia summit in the French resort town of Nice.

Nice, France - French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched an impassioned defence Friday of his efforts to end August's Russian-Georgian war, accusing his critics of not having ideas and attacking the role of Georgia's allies, including the United States.

"If you consider the strategy of some of the 'friends of Georgia' (a group including the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine) and the strategy of the EU, the EU one is far the better," Sarkozy said after talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.

Nice, France - Russia and the United States should both refrain from siting any new weapons systems in Europe before a major summit of European and North American powers in June or July 2009, the French and Russian presidents said on Friday.

The 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe should meet in June or July 2009, and "until then, please let's have no more talk about the deployment of missiles or anti-missile protection systems," French President Nicolas Sarkozy, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, said.

Nice, France - The European Union and Russia are set to re-launch on December 2 talks on a strategic treaty which EU leaders froze in protest at Russia's August invasion of Georgia, officials said Friday.

The two sides' top negotiators are due to hold a fresh round of talks on December 2 in Brussels, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the fringes of an EU-Russia summit in the French resort town of Nice.

Nice, France - On Friday, European Union and Russian leaders agreed to re-launch negotiations on a "new EU-Russia agreement" on December 2, with expert meetings due on November 21-22.

The new deal is meant to replace an earlier Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) agreed for 10 years with Boris Yeltsin's Russia in 1997.

The PCA still governs EU-Russia relations, since EU leaders decided to freeze talks on the new deal on September 1 in protest at Russia's August invasion of Georgia.

Nice, France - Russia supports the idea of holding a summit of the world's greatest powers in 101 days' time to debate the reform of the global financial system, a Kremlin official said Friday.

"As I understand it, we support" a proposal from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to hold a summit of the world's 20 greatest powers 100 days after a similar meeting planned in Washington on Saturday, Natalia Timakova, spokeswoman of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, told journalists at an EU-Russia summit in Nice, France.