“I just asked for one millimeter of progress in Georgia in giving the European Union observers access to the other side of the line,” Kouchner told reporters at an East-West security meeting in Corfu, Greece. “It has not been accepted.”

Russia’s five-day war against pro-western Georgia last August continues to provoke European and U.S. concern that the Kremlin is striving to pull formerly Soviet-dominated countries back into its orbit.

Russia was the only country at today’s meeting of the 56- nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that has granted diplomatic recognition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two territories that declared independence from Georgia after the war.

Russia has moved to station troops in both territories and in April granted them five-year defense guarantees. It blocked the extension of a United Nations monitoring mission in Abkhazia and an OSCE mission along the border with South Ossetia.

Entry Barred

The 200 unarmed EU observers that remain are unable to cross the border from Georgia into the disputed territories.

Suspicions over Russia’s designs on Georgia, a country striving to join NATO, led to a cool reception by western governments of President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a revamp of European security structures.

“We really, really need to focus on the practical stuff: existing commitments,” Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said. “By that I mean problem number 1: Georgia and the continuation of the mission there. We need to fix it.”

Western officials pointed to the OSCE, an East-West consultative forum created in Helsinki during a lull in Cold War tensions in 1975, as the best arena for discussing conflict prevention on the continent.

“We want to maintain the structures that were done in Helsinki,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said. “Many things can be developed further without changing the basic structures, without putting at risk something which has provided fantastic stability for many years.”

Russia last week sought to heighten its influence by calling on NATO and the OSCE to join in a summit with two groupings of former Soviet republics -- the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Foreign ministers from the OSCE countries will hold their next discussions on the subject in December in Athens. 

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