(AVIGNON) - A European observer mission for Georgia is "practically ready", EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Friday, adding that he thought Russia would cooperate.

Solana, arriving for an EU foreign ministers' meeting in southern France, said the meeting would discuss the possibilities of sending a mission aimed at overseeing the hoped-for withdrawal of Russian troops from its former Soviet-Union neighbour.

The mission "is practically ready, everything is done," said Solana after arriving, along with most of the assembled European ministers, aboard a special train from Paris.

Asked if he thought Russia would agree to cooperate with such a mission Solana replied "I think so. I think they understand what we want and what they have to do".

However he admitted that there were still some fundamental points to solve.

"The only thing is to see when, how and under what mandate," the observer mission can operate.

That point will be decided at a key meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on Monday and a subsequent meeting of the EU ministers on September 15, Solana added.

He would not talk about numbers, saying that too was to be decided.

However Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, entering the same meeting, spoke of "several hundreds".

The withdrawal of Russian troops to the positions they held before the outbreak of the hostilities in Georgia on September 7 was part of a French-brokered six-point peace plan agreed by Moscow and Tbilisi.

European diplomats were allowed to enter a buffer zone controlled by Russian forces near Georgia's rebel region of South Ossetia for the first time on Friday.

But the ambassadors from Estonia, Latvia and Sweden were restricted to visiting only one village, an AFP reporter said.

Russia has said it will only pull troops out of the buffer zone once international controls, including military observers and police, are in place in the area and once Georgia signs a non-aggression pact.

The European Union has called on Russia to withdraw troops from Georgia immediately and condemned Moscow's decision to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another rebel province of Georgia.

Russian troops poured into Georgia last month to repel an attack by the Georgian army aimed at retaking South Ossetia. They have remained deep inside Georgian territory in what Moscow has called "security zones."

Solana stressed that getting Russia to withdraw its troops was the important aim, not getting EU observers in.

"The pulling out of the Russian forces from Georgia proper is the objective, and if something is needed to be there in place of them, we will be willing to do it," he assured.

The EU has also voiced support for the efforts of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which said Thursday it had sent military observers into the buffer zone between Georgian and Russian troops for the first time since the two countries fought the five-day war last month.

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