Concessions by Rifkind do little to deflect EU anger

THE British Foreign Secretary, Mr Malcolm Rifkind, yesterday hinted at a significant easing of Britain's obstructionist protest. But the signs of concessions did little to deflect the anger of exasperated EU foreign ministers.

Mr Rifkind had to sit and listen to an unprecedented barrage of criticism from his colleagues. Among the most severe were Denmark, Finland and Sweden, countries which are traditionally sympathetic to British views in EU debates. "I have never seen anything like it," one official said.

The Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, led the unexpectedly robust criticism, calling for the British strategy to be abandoned immediately. One EU minister was reported to have used the word "blackmail".

Announcing that he would not be blocking decisions on Algeria and Bosnia, Mr Rilkind signalled to journalists that there was flexibility in the British position "where you have specific proposals where a delay itself would have been damaging, there have been exemptions'.

The Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Spring, welcomed the change in British tone as he left the meeting for the Belfast peace talks.

Mr Spring said there was a strong wish in the Council to resolve the present impasse. He said officials would be working flat out to get an acceptable framework for the lifting of the overall ban by the time of the Florence summit in 10 days.

The Commission is now working on the outline of such a framework and will present it first to the standing veterinary committee. If backed there it will come back to ministers either at the farm council or to foreign ministers in Rome next Monday. The Commission President, Mr Jacques Santer, told ministers optimistically "we may have entered the home stretch".

The EU's Italian presidency, meanwhile, reminded Britain that its tactics could result in it being taken to the European Court of Justice for breach of its obligations to co-operate with its partners under the Treaty of Rome.

"The presidency reminds all member states of their obligations under Article 5 of the treat which requires them not to take any steps which could endanger the general achievements of the treaty," a statement issued by the presidency said.

Mr van Mierlo, who led the charge against British obstructionism at the meeting, told journalists it was a "dialogue of the deaf". Britain insisted, he said, in regarding the issue as a trade dispute while the other member states saw it as a public health issue.

In what he described as a gesture of goodwill", Mr Rifkind made concessions on a mandate for talks with Algeria, a matter of great concern to the French, and on funding for the Bosnian elections. All this came on top of the announcement last Wednesday that he would not block the signing of an association accord with Slovenia. That happened yesterday afternoon.

The three decisions duly went though but some 17 others did not they included an action plan for relations with Canada, and mandates for discussions with Syria and several other countries.

Mr Spring's place was taken yesterday afternoon for the ministers' Inter Governmental Conference debate on security and defence by the Minister of State for European affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell.

Ministers are keen to maintain the momentum of reform of Europe's security systems following the Berlin Nato decision last month to "Europeanise"

some of its command structure. The move was made to allow Nato forces under European commanders to be lent to the Western European Union for EU peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

. Germany is to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Justice against the European Commission because of its moves to ease the export ban on British beef derivatives, the Health Minister, Mr Horst Seehofer, said yesterday.

He was speaking after a meeting in Berlin of Germany's 16 regional state governments.