Protests, threats as EU readies constitution talks

A majority of European Union countries yesterday demanded a substantial renegotiation of a draft European constitution to secure their power in an enlarged bloc, five days before crucial treaty negotiations open in Rome.

At the last EU foreign ministers' meeting before talks begin on Saturday, 19 small- and medium-sized states insisted that any subject could be put on the agenda, resisting efforts by the Italian EU presidency to limit the scope of negotiations.

The big EU member states - Germany, France, Britain and Italy - plus the Benelux countries, all want the draft, approved in June by a Convention of parliamentary and national delegates headed by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to be adopted with little or no change.

Future EU member Poland raised a series of substantive objections yesterday, and smaller states made clear they would insist on renegotiating key provisions that affect their voting rights and the right to one European commissioner per country.

"Almost everything is going to be reopened," Belgian Secretary of State for European Affairs Jacques Simonet said.

Italy's aim of concluding negotiations before its presidency expires at the end of the year "seems illusory to me", he said.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini backed away from his previous insistence that no state should be entitled to challenge any provision in the draft unless it had a consensus for an alternative.

But he told a news conference that if any country blocked an overall deal, "I will ask that party to assume full responsibility and state quite clearly to European citizens 'I said 'no'."

Germany, which stands to gain the most from the proposed reform in voting rights, cautioned against unravelling the text. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made a veiled financial threat to any state that held up the negotiations.

In Prague, right-wing Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a Eurosceptic whose role is largely ceremonial, blasted the draft constitution, saying it would give birth to a superstate where Czech citizens would have a negligible voice. The centre-left government backs the constitution but wants several changes.