(TALLINN) - Estonia President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has urged the European Union to rethink its drive to strengthen ties with Moscow in the wake of the conflict in Georgia, his spokesman said Monday.

"Russia's military strikes in Georgia toll a knell for many of Europe's hopes, such the possibility of sharing common fundamental values with Russia," Toomas Sildam said Ilves told the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Sunday.

Sildam said that Ilves wanted the European Union to "show Russia that aggression will not be without consequences," suspending an agreement on making it easier for Russians to get visas to EU countries, and that "the entire spectrum of relations between the European Union and Russia should be re-examined."

Sildam said Ilves called on the EU to "assume a key role in ending the attacks by Russia's armed forces on civil and military targets in Georgia.

"It is the European Union that can and should be the strong power that induces the Russian Federation to end its military activity on the territory of the Republic of Georgia," Sildam quoted Ilves as saying.

"War has broken out in Europe, a European nation has fallen victim to the aggression of its neighbour, and the European Union, as the bearer of European values, cannot remain a helpless bystander," the president told Solana.

Estonia, which like Georgia broke free from the crumbling Soviet bloc in 1991, is a staunch ally of Tbilisi.

Estonia joined the EU and NATO in 2004, and has backed Georgia's pro-Western leadership's goal of joining both bodies.

On Saturday, Ilves and his counterparts from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania -- fellow former communist-ruled states which are now in the EU and NATO -- had called on both organisations to oppose the "imperialist policy" of Russia.

EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the crisis in Brussels on Wednesday.

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