(WARSAW) - Poland on Saturday called for an emergency EU summit to discuss the escalating conflict in Georgia, and Sweden's foreign minister said it could take place in Brussels next week.

"I have asked the French EU presidency to urgently convene a meeting of the European Council at the level of heads of government," said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, quoted by the PAP news agency.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had received the request, Sikorski said, adding that "it seems to me that a meeting will be convened".

"The territorial integrity of Georgia is currently being violated on an enormous scale," he said. "There are bombardments, civilians are dying, foreign military forces are on Georgian territory."

In Stockholm, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said EU foreign ministers could gather Monday in Paris, adding: "There is also then the possiblity of a formal summit in Brussels later in the week."

"There must be a very strong response on the part of the European Union," said Bildt, quoted by Sweden's TT news agency.

A Swedish foreign ministry spokesman told AFP that Stockholm has been contacted by the French foreign ministry to participate in a meeting Monday on developments in South Ossetia.

Poland, the biggest of the former Soviet bloc nations in the European Union, has been a strong supporter of Georgia's ambitions to join the EU and NATO, and Tbilisi and Warsaw maintain close relations.

With so many European leaders away from their capitals, "in Beijing or elsewhere," it was not yet possible to know the date of an emergency summit, Sikorski said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Beijing on Friday for the gala opening of the Olympic Games, just as Georgia sought to reassert control over South Ossetia, prompting a Russian incursion into the breakaway region.

Sikorski said "urgent talks" between foreign ministers of the 27 EU member states were possible "in the coming days, or even in the coming hours".

The European Council is the formal name given to summits of EU heads of state and government, which normally take place up to four times a year.

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