POLAND: Poland details terms to end EU-Russia pact veto

Poland would be willing to lift its veto of a Russia-European Union cooperation pact if it were given the right to break off talks at any time, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Friday (November 24). Kaczynski told a news conference these conditions had been offered this week by the Finnish EU presidency but had then been withdrawn. That was why talks ahead of the EU-Russia summit in Helsinki on Friday had broken down and why Poland used its veto. Asked if going back to that proposal would convince him to lift the veto, Kaczynski said that was what Poland was demanding. Warsaw blocked consensus on an EU negotiating mandate on Thursday (November 23), spurning a compromise offered by Finland. "There is no way we can accept an attack on our exporters, especially in the agricultural sector. It is obvious that we have to protect them. All of the European Union countries protect their economy, and in high priority cases, even intervene on behalf of independent corporations. In this case it's about an entire industry and sector of society. Most importantly, we cannot agree to Russia treating Poland like a country which doesn't belong to the European Union. Russia's move (embargo on Polish farm products) violated an existing agreement between the EU and Russia," Kaczynski told a news conference in Warsaw. "If today we would agree to another round of negotiations about another agreement (between Russia and EU), with the previous agreement being violated, we would in fact agree to another agreement which would exclude Poland," he added. Poland has demanded that Moscow lift a ban on imports of Polish meat products and other foodstuffs before it gives its mandate for the launch of negotiations on the pact. The Polish move, dramatising latent hostility between Warsaw and its former Soviet master, was a political embarrassment for the 25-nation EU, which has been unable to speak with a single voice at Friday's meeting with Putin. Polish President Lech Kaczynski's foreign policy adviser Andrzej Krawczyk said earlier on Friday that he hoped a compromise could still be found.

ITN Source | November 25, 2006

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