PARIS - FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy flies to Moscow on Monday to tell Russia to finish withdrawing troops from Georgia and fully comply with a month-old peace deal or face an escalation of its standoff with the West.

Four weeks after Mr Sarkozy brokered the ceasefire deal between Russia and its smaller neighbour, the West says Moscow has yet to honour half of the six-point plan, including pulling troops back to positions they held before a brief war with Georgia.

The Kremlin says a provision in the deal allowing it to conduct 'special measures' permits the stationing of troops in a buffer zone around the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - an interpretation Tbilisi, and the West, denies.

Mr Sarkozy is returning to Moscow with the backing of the European Union, whose leaders agreed last week to postpone talks with Russia on a new partnership pact scheduled for later this month if Moscow did not pull back its forces.

'We will ask Russia to apply the six-point plan scrupulously,' Mr Sarkozy told a news conference at the end of the EU leaders' summit, also called the European Council, last week.

'The return of spheres of influence is unacceptable. Yalta is over,' he added, referring to the 1945 major powers' meeting in the Crimea which helped shape post-World War Two Europe.

Mr Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, will be accompanied by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. They will all meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a palace near Moscow.

In addition to a withdrawal, Mr Sarkozy will press Mr Medvedev to accept more international observers to monitor the pullout, and to set up talks on security arrangements in the rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Russia stormed after Georgia tried to take back South Ossetia last month, officials said.

'It seems to us that it would be good to manage in Moscow to set a date and a place for these international discussions,' an official close to Mr Sarkozy told reporters ahead of the trip. The talks are part of the six-point plan agreed by both sides.

Crucial meeting
In a sign of increased Russian cooperation, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Saturday its team of around 20 observers were now able to circulate freely throughout Georgia. It aims to send more observers soon.

EU foreign ministers meeting on Saturday approved plans for a civilian EU monitoring mission to work alongside OSCE observers in Georgia, increasing pressure on Russia to withdraw.

'The aim is clear: as big a deployment as possible so the Russians can leave as quickly as possible,' one French official told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in southern France this weekend.

EU foreign ministers would not comment at the meeting on what steps the 27-nation bloc might take next against Russia.

Only a small number of states have called for sanctions so far.

'Everything will depend on what happens on Monday, Sept 8,' one senior European official said on condition of anonymity.

'The French president said clearly at the end of the European Council meeting: 'If it goes well, it goes well. If it does not go well, we will have to get tougher towards Russia.'' -- REUTERS