French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called the hostilities in South Ossetia «massacres» and also said Sunday he would press Georgia and Russia for an immediate end to the violence in the breakaway Georgian province. Kouchner said the EU cannot allow such a «Middle Age battle» to continue. He spoke in an interview with The Associated Press hours before he and Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb left Paris for a meeting with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in Tbilisi. Georgia, meanwhile, agreed to a cease-fire and expressed its readiness to start negotiations with Russia. But Moscow said Georgian troops weren't observing the cease-fire pledge yet, the Interfax news agency reported. Kouchner, who alternated between English and French during the interview at a newly-inaugurated Foreign Ministry crisis center, said he would deliver a «message of peace» to Georgia and Russia. The foreign minister, speaking before Georgia announced that it would observe a cease-fire, said he would call on both countries «to stop the fighting immediately, stop the bombing of civilians, stop the massacres that are taking place.» The EU «cannot accept such a war, a terribly devastating and ... unacceptable war, at our doors,» Kouchner said. France has held the EU's six-month rotating presidency since July 1. Kouchner said he and Stubb, who will meet Monday with Russian officials in Moscow after the Tbilisi visit, will also deliver an EU offer to help provide humanitarian aid to victims. A plane loaded with humanitarian cargo was being sent to Georgia, Kouchner said. He did not give any further details on the kind or quantity of aid, but a Foreign Ministry statement said the plane would be ready for departure Monday. Kouchner would discuss the results of his trip at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, the statement said.
