France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy says he is concerned about Russia’s threat to deploy missiles near Poland and wants a summit on European security.

“We really must move forward… to remove sources of friction,” Mr Sarkozy said at a joint news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The talks in Nice, in southern France, came just ahead of a global summit in Washington on the financial crisis.

Mr Sarkozy also urged Russia to complete a troop pull-out from Georgia.

“I told Mr Medvedev there will have to be more progress with regard to withdrawing troops,” he said. France hosted the EU-Russia meeting on Friday, as it currently holds the EU presidency.

Under a French-brokered ceasefire deal, Russia withdrew many of its troops following a brief war with Georgia in August. But Georgia says Russia must also withdraw forces from the Akhalgori and Kodori Gorge areas.

The deal said Russia should pull back to positions it held before the war. Russia plans to keep thousands of troops in the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

New security plans

Referring to Russia’s missile deployment threat, Mr Sarkozy called for a European security summit next year under the auspices of the European security body, the OSCE.

“I told President Medvedev how much we are concerned about his declaration [on missiles] and how there should be no deployment in any enclave as long as we have not discussed the new conditions of pan-European security,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy said the summit next year could look at a Russian proposal for a new security architecture in Europe.

The BBC’s Oana Lungescu in Nice says some see the proposal as Moscow’s attempt to gain a greater say in world affairs to the detriment of the US and Nato.

Moscow sees a planned US missile shield in Central Europe as a threat. Within hours of the conclusion of the US presidential election last week, President Medvedev announced plans to site short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, near Poland, to neutralise the US shield.

The US insists the shield – with installations in Poland and the Czech Republic – is a defence against missiles from “rogue” nations, like Iran.

At the summit the EU confirmed that EU-Russia partnership talks, put on hold because of Russia’s military incursion into Georgia, would resume – but no date was set.

Mr Medvedev said that “before signing a special, global treaty on European security, all of us should avoid unilateral steps which affect security in Europe.

“Russia has never taken unilateral steps. All these measures taken by us, including the measures which I announced recently, have been a response to the actions of individual countries in Europe which, without consulting anyone, have agreed on hosting new military systems on their soil.”

BBC NEWS