February 28, 2003	Friday	Zul Hijjah 26, 1423

BRUSSELS: The EU’s quest for a fully fledged constitution is running into trouble because of an avalanche of amendments, and deep divisions between the old and the new European Union over Iraq.

A major complication comes from east European candidate countries, stung by last week’s furious attack by the French president, Jacques Chirac, on their pro-US stance on Iraq.

Six of them are demanding that the start of treaty talks by governments be postponed until they have joined the union — a clear attempt to ensure their voice is heard.

And the discussion of one vital area — how the EU should be represented on the world stage — has been postponed indefinitely because the disagreements about tackling Saddam Hussein have made a mockery of the common foreign policy. “Its just too difficult,” said one diplomat.

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the convention on the future of Europe, submitted a fresh batch of nine treaty articles to the 105-member body in Brussels on Thursday.

But the convention’s 13-strong praesidium, chaired by the former French president, is still struggling with 1,100 amendments submitted after the first 16 articles were published earlier this month.

Mr Giscard, who boasts that his constitution will last the enlarged EU for half a century, insists work on the blueprint can still be completed on schedule this summer.

But participants and observers say it is now almost certain that the convention, which has already been meeting for a year, will take longer.

The original idea was that the draft would be ready to present to EU leaders when they meet at the Thessaloniki summit in June before they hold their own negotiations on the constitution.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, is desperate for it all to be agreed by December so he can oversee a new treaty of Rome — echoing the EEC’s founding treaty of 1957.

Time is pressing: ten countries are due to join the EU in May 2004, European parliament elections will be held the following month and a new commission has to be chosen.

Critics complain that Mr Giscard’s team is not equipped to write the constitution and the procedures for handling the proposed amendments are unclear. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service