BUDAPEST, Dec 2: British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday that Britain will not back off from its demand for a rebate from the European Union budget but is willing to pay its “fair share” of development costs in the EU’s new member states.

I’ve made it clear all the way throughout I am not giving up the rebate but I’ve also said we’ve got to pay our fair share of the costs of enlargement, Blair told a press conference in Budapest.

We will not give up any part of the rebate on any common agricultural policy. We will not give up any part of the rebate or make any changes to it in respect to any money going to the original 15 European (Union) countries, Blair said.

But he added, without giving details, that Britain was prepared . . . to be in a position where we pay our fair share of the economic development money that these new Europeans need. Otherwise we’ll end up in a situation where we pay only a third of our costs towards that.

He stressed however that even if we do that it has got to be on the basis that for the first time in the history of the European Union we come into equality and parity, in terms of the British contribution.

Blair, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, held talks with the leaders of the Visegrad-four — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — in an effort to end a row over the EU’s 2007-2013 budget.

Blair was expected to lobby the former communist countries to accept less in the way of development funding — crucial for new members looking to modernize their economies — in order to clinch a budget deal at a summit in two weeks’ time.

But poorer new member states have been cool to the idea of receiving less money in light of France’s refusal to give up farm subsidies and Britain’s rejection of calls to renounce its EU rebate.—AFP