(TBILISI) - The European Union expects Russia to respect a peace plan and pull its troops back from deep inside Georgia, its foreign policy chief said Tuesday on a visit to watch EU ceasefire monitors deploying.

"I am optimistic that all the parties will comply, as we have done, to the terms of the agreement," Javier Solana said ahead of Wednesday's launch of the EU mission to monitor a truce in Georgia after its August war with Russia.

"The objective of this mission is to allow Russian forces to withdraw," Solana said as the European Commission called an international donors' conference for October 22 to drum up aid for Georgia's reconstruction.

Moscow said earlier the EU monitors would not immediately enter a Russian-controlled "buffer zone" around the breakaway region of South Ossetia when the mission begins.

The monitors would patrol "up to the southern limit of the security zone" under an EU-Russia deal reached Tuesday, Interfax news agency quoted Vitaly Manushko, spokesman for Russian forces in South Ossetia, as saying.

Tuesday's agreement was reached by EU representatives and the commander of Russian forces in South Ossetia, Marat Kulakhmetov, Manushko said, adding there would be "further consultations" about the monitors' role.

Solana, who was due to meet later with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, said the EU anticipates a "phase-by-phase" deployment of the monitors.

The so-called European Union Monitoring Mission -- comprising at least 200 people -- aims to stabilise the region and ensure compliance by Georgia and Russia with an EU-brokered peace plan.

Many of the EU observers have a police or military background. They include a large contingent of French gendarmes, while others are experts in human rights and judicial issues.

Their deployment is part of EU plans designed to stabilise and rehabilitate the economy of the battle-scarred former Soviet republic in the Caucasus.

In Brussels, a European Commission official told AFP the ministerial-level donors conference would be organised with the participation of the EU's French presidency and the World Bank.

Eneko Landaburu, director general of the EU's external relations division, said that to fix the total amount required the EU must first find out exactly what Georgia's needs are.

The commission has already said it is willing to contribute up to 500 million euros (713 million euros) to help with reconstruction and to relaunch the Georgian economy over the 2008-2010 period.

The EU's executive hopes the European Union's 27 member nations will match that sum between them to provide a billion euros of European aid to Georgia in total.

"We have to help the Georgians... but there is a very important political problem; the use of this money and the conditions attached," said Landaburu.

Notably, the donors must "prevent a militarisation which could give them (the Georgians) bad ideas," he added.

Months of mounting tensions erupted into full-scale hostilities between Georgia and Russia in early August over the Moscow-backed rebel province of South Ossetia.

Moscow said it was protecting Russian citizens in the region from Georgian aggression, but Tbilisi accused Moscow of provoking the conflict in order to cement its control over the region and destabilise Georgia.

Drawing widespread international condemnation, Moscow subsequently recognised South Ossetia and another rebel Georgian region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

Under the peace plan brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the EU's behalf, Russia is due to draw back its troops from "buffer zones" around the rebel regions into the regions themselves by October 10.

According to Georgia's interior ministry, about 800 Russian soldiers are deployed across 18 military posts in the buffer zones around the rebel territories.

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