Nice, France - The European Union and Russia are set to re-launch on December 2 talks on a strategic treaty which EU leaders froze in protest at Russia's August invasion of Georgia, officials said Friday.

The two sides' top negotiators are due to hold a fresh round of talks on December 2 in Brussels, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the fringes of an EU-Russia summit in the French resort town of Nice.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed that those talks should be preceded by expert meetings on November 21-22, sources said.

However, neither side's top leaders confirmed that they had set a date for renewed talks, saying only that the negotiations would indeed go ahead.

"We just decided to continue negotiations: I can't give you a date for signing the treaty. It's a strategically important deal, and it's extremely complex, in view of the range of areas it looks at," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, whose organization is tasked with negotiating the treaty.

"We should go down the path of economics, not the path of missiles," he added in reference to the ongoing conflict between Russia and the United States over their respective plans to site missiles in Europe.

Medvedev said that he hoped talks would re-start "in the near future," and said that the final treaty "should be substantive, clear in structure, and provide a framework for future work."

Russian and EU officials held the first round of talks on the so-called "New EU-Russia Agreement," which is intended to give a legal framework to their relations in fields ranging from trade and investment to environmental protection and education, on July 4.

But EU leaders then froze further talks on September 1 in protest at Russia's August invasion of Georgia.

EU foreign ministers on Monday overrode Lithuanian objections and agreed to re-launch the talks, arguing that it would not be in the EU's interest not to talk with Russia.

However, they stressed that the decision did not mean a return to "business as usual" following Russia's unilateral recognition of the independence of the Georgian breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. (dpa)