(VILNIUS) - A group of EU foreign ministers were Sunday bracing for a mission to Georgia, hoping to head off the spectre of conflict between the pro-Western former Soviet republic and Russia.

"We are going to Georgia to express our solidarity with Georgia and the EU's solidarity on Georgia's territorial integrity," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters after a pre-departure summit.

He had emerged from talks with Lithuania's Petras Vaitiekunas, Poland's Radoslaw Sikorski and Slovenia's Dimitrij Rupel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU until the end of June.

Bildt, Vaitiekunas, Sikorski and Rupel are scheduled to fly to Tbilisi on Monday, and are set to be joined there by Latvia's Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins.

Rupel has said he wants to establish the precise level of tension between Georgia and Russia -- seemingly on a collision course over two breakaway regions of Georgia, above all Abkhazia but also South Ossetia.

The two areas split from Georgia after armed conflict in the early 1990s, following Georgia's declaration of independence from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991.

Pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Thursday that his country had been on the verge of war with Russia for days, and that the threat remained real.

Tensions have been rising since mid-April.

First, Moscow announced it was boosting ties with the pro-Russian separatist authorities in Abkhazia, then it increased the number of "peacekeeping" forces in the region, saying Georgia was preparing a military assault to try and re-take the rebel territory.

Tbilisi presented that development as a precursor to high-level military aggression, a stance which found some favour with Western leaders who want to see the former Soviet republic admitted into NATO.

Alongside NATO, the EU also supported Georgia's position, accusing Moscow of compromising Georgia's territorial integrity.

Lithuania, which also broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991, and joined the EU in 2004, is a staunch ally of Georgia.

Last month, Vilnius vetoed EU attempts to kick off talks on a new "Partnership and Cooperation Agreement" with energy-rich and newly assertive Russia, to replace the old deal signed in 1997 when Moscow was still reeling from the Soviet collapse.

Any EU member can block talks between the union and other countries if it feels its national interests are being sidelined.

Besides problems in its own ties with Moscow -- notably a dispute over a halt in Russia oil supplies -- Vilnius also demanded that the EU do more to help Georgia and Moldova, another ex-Soviet republic with a pro-Russian separatist region.

"Progress in the solution of frozen conflicts in Georgia and Moldova is a direct condition for the successful result of the EU talks with Russia," Vaitiekunas said Sunday.

Sunday's talks in Vilnius produced a deal to have Lithuania's demands included in the mandate for the negotiations, paving the way for Vilnius to lift its veto provided all 27 EU members give the wording a green light at a meeting on May 26.

The EU hopes the talks can be launched at an EU-Russia summit in Siberia on June 26-27, when new president Dmitry Medvedev will represent Russia for the first time.

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