But, in a blunt demonstration of who is in charge in the tense zone around South Ossetia, Russian soldiers turned back a United Nations convoy. And the Georgian government said Russia reinforced its positions on the outskirts of the Black Sea port city of Poti over the weekend.

The World Court case opened a new legal front in the battle between Georgia and Russia for control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and began as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Moscow with a European Union delegation for talks aimed at easing the standoff.

But Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Monday just before the EU delegation sat down for talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow was against an autonomous EU monitoring mission.

He said such a force would lead to unnecessary "fragmentation" of international monitoring efforts by the U.N. and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.