(WARSAW) - Once the vassals of imperial Russia, Poland and three Baltic states have made it their goal to sharpen the EU's tone towards Russia in the wake of the Georgia crisis but want to avoid divisions that Moscow could exploit.

In just days, the virulent criticism voiced in Central Europe against French President Nicolas Sarkozy's six-point peace plan to halt armed conflict between Russia and Georgia fell silent. For the moment, radical demands for sanctions against Russia have been put on the back burner.

On the eve of the EU's emergency Monday summit where the 27-member bloc will tackle the Georgia crisis, the staunchest allies of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili are adamant that Europe stand united in the face of resurgent Russia.

"It is important that the European Union will speak with Russia with a united and powerful voice", Urmas Paet, minister of foreign affairs for ex-Soviet 2004 EU newcomer Estonia, told AFP.

"The conflict will last a long time and a determining factor will be the EU's unity," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitekunas told parliament recently. Like Estonia, Lithuania joined the EU and NATO in 2004 after breaking free from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Poland will have done its job if it contributes to the shaping of a united position for the entire European Union," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday. Poland shed communism in 1989, joining NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.

Instead of demanding sanctions against Russia -- that would not enjoy unanimous backing among EU partners -- Poland and the Baltic states decided to emphasise swift aid for Georgia: immediate humanitarian assistance as well as help to reconstruct the economy. Tusk also signalled the EU would have to free up extra funds to accomplish this task.

"We're not concentrating on how to harm Russia, but on how to help Georgia and the EU's eastern neighbours," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the Saturday edition of Poland's liberal Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Poland and the Baltic states, all direct neighbours of Russia, are also insisting the EU adopt a very firm formula to condemn Moscow's recognition of the independence of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Although without much hope, the 2004 EU newcomers are lobbying the bloc to spearhead the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to replace troops sent by Russia into Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s.

Ex-Soviet Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also wanted an immediate halt to special treatment for Russian citizens seeking EU visas, a suspension of relations and cancelling of the EU's talks with Russia on a new partnership accord launched after some difficulty in June.

However German Chancellor Angela Merkel who travelled to Estonia and Lithuania on Tuesday made it clear she was opposed to cutting lines of communication with Russia.

"We need to speak with Russia. We can't solve problems without speaking together," she said.

After years of having the impression that their warnings about the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin were falling on deaf ears in the EU, leaders of Poland and the Baltic states may have some satisfaction that they are being better heard at the Brussels summit Monday.

"I hope the next time our European partners will listen more to what the countries which have lived under communism are saying about Russia because everything that happened proved we were absolutely right," said Mart Laar, a former Estonian prime minister who has been an economic advisor to Saakashvili for the last three years.

The Baltic states are particularly hopeful the EU will overhaul relations with Russia.

"Everyone certainly understands that the world is no longer what it was before and it is no longer possible to continue in the old way," Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip observed in the wake of Russia's offensive in Georgia.

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