RIGA, Latvia (AP) — The pro-business New Era party said Monday it has agreed short of the majority needed to form its own government.
      It said it will join with the center-right First Party, the centrist Green and Farmers' Union and the right-wing Fatherland and Freedom.
      Combined, the four parties will control 55 seats in the 100-seat Saeima. Six parties will be represented in the former Soviet Baltic republic's new legislature, which is slated to convene on Nov. 5.
      "We have already started discussing which ministries each party will take," said New Era spokesman Peter Vinkilis, adding that the coalition deal would name 41-year-old Repse as prime minister.
      He said a coalition agreement could be signed within two weeks and submitted to President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who would have to nominate Repse for the prime ministerial post. His Cabinet would then need parliamentary approval.
      The pending deal locks out the second and third largest vote-getters — the left-wing For Human Rights and the center-right People's Party.
      The People's Party agrees with New Era on most big policy questions. But its leader, former prime minister Andris Skele, and Repse are thought to deeply dislike each other — making any cooperation difficult.
      All the center-right parties have said For Human Rights, with strong backing from members of the country's large Russian-speaking minority, is too socialist-oriented and too pro-Moscow and that they couldn't work with it.
      Repse, who campaigned on the need to stamp out corruption, pledged to keep the staunchly pro-West nation of 2.5 million people firmly on the road toward NATO and European Union membership. It hopes to enter both within the next few years.
      Repse has named Grigorijs Krupnikovs, a leader of Latvia's small Jewish community, as his choice for foreign minister. He'd be the first Jewish Cabinet minister since Latvia regained independence during the 1991 Soviet collapse.

      ROME, Oct 15 (Reuters) — Russia, Ukraine and Mediterranean rim countries such as Israel can never become members of the European Union, European Commission President Romano Prodi said in an interview published on Tuesday.
      "The question is 'do we stop or don't we stop?'" he said in an interview with the Turin newspaper La Stampa, when asked if the borders of the union could one day embrace Russia.
      "As far as Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and countries of the southern Mediterranean are concerned, including Israel, you can link together many things — but not institutions," he said.
      Prodi said cooperation agreements with those countries could include technical and economic accords. But EU officials believe it would be difficult to forge common foreign, defence, economic and other government policies with Russia.
      His comments were part of a growing debate on the ultimate frontiers of the EU, which is on the verge of a historic enlargement into former communist central and eastern Europe.
      Some EU leaders and commissioners say privately that Turkey, which is an officially recognised candidate for EU membership, will never be able to join the bloc.
      Prodi said the Balkan region was a different matter.
      "The Balkans, whatever the timetable is, are destined to become part of the European family. They are a region we have to look after," he said.
      The European Commission said last week that 10 countries can wrap up accession talks in December and join the EU in 2004 in a historic unification of Europe, provided Ireland's voters do not derail the project in a referendum.
      The 10 frontrunners for EU membership are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the small Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta.
      The Commission said it would support Bulgaria's and Romania's efforts to join as early as 2007, expanding the bloc into the Balkans.

      VILNIUS (Reuters) — President Bush is expected to visit Lithuania after next month's NATO summit to congratulate it and its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia on being invited to join the alliance, diplomats here said on Wednesday.
      The three former communist Baltic states are expected to be invited to join the Western defense alliance during a NATO summit in Prague on November 21-22.
      Lithuanian media reported that the U.S. leader would fly to Vilnius directly from the Czech capital late on November 22, and meet the presidents of the three Baltic states the next day.

      PSKOV, Russia (AP) — As NATO prepares to expand right up to Russia's doorstep, experts from NATO countries and Russia met Friday in this northwestern city to discuss what this means for the former Cold War foes.
      The conference was called to debate the pros and cons of NATO's anticipated invitation to the ex-Soviet Baltic republics to join the alliance next month. During the opening day Thursday, the participants sparred over whether enlarging the union would help the world fight post-Cold War challenges such as terrorism.
      "Terrorism is not an enemy that one can fight with tanks and artillery," said Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs of Russia's upper house of parliament.
      But U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow argued that precisely by welcoming new members and improving ties with Russia, NATO was developing new capabilities to meet today's threats.
      "NATO is not enlarging but rather opening up," said Rolf Welberts, director of the NATO information office in Moscow.
      Alliance leaders are expected to invite Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria to join NATO at next month's summit in Prague, the Czech capital. The alliance had already begun its eastward push in 1999 by welcoming Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
      Vladimir Nikishin, a senior Russian Defense Ministry official, said the Kremlin is worried that the current NATO enlargement may create several so-called "gray zones" near the Russian borders. Russia fears that NATO troops could conceivably deploy significant numbers of tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons to these countries, he said.
      But Welberts insisted that those fears were not based on fact.
      "We are not planning to locate a combat army close to Russian borders," he said.
      Russia and NATO significantly improved their ties after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. During a May summit outside Rome, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his NATO counterparts signed an agreement setting up a new cooperation council. But even with the creation of a new NATO-Russia partnership, the Kremlin continued to voice its opposition to the alliance pushing further into Eastern Europe.
      Welberts said that the problem of Russia-NATO collaboration is mostly "based on psychological issues than on anything else."
      Experts at the conference also discussed Russia's Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad. Russian officials have been pushing for the European Union to allow visa-free travel between Russia and Kaliningrad after the European Union's anticipated expansion in 2004, which will leave the region of 1.5 million inhabitants surrounded by the EU.
      Rimantas Shidlauskas, Lithuania's ambassador to Russia, said his country — the EU candidate whose territory Russian trains cross to reach Kaliningrad — wanted to be flexible. But Shidlauskas expressed wariness about any agreement that would harm Lithuanian's chances of being a full member of the European Union's Schengen Pact, which created a visa-free travel zone for EU citizens, in 1999.
      Russian lawmaker Valery Golubev said he remained confident that a way out of the crisis would be found.

      RIGA, Oct 18 (Reuters) — Support in Latvia for joining the European Union has slipped slightly, an opinion poll showed on Friday.
      As entry negotiations continued before the EU's final decision on the bloc's eastward expansion in December, the quarterly Latvijas Fakti survey, conducted in September, indicated that 46.2 percent of Latvians backed joining the EU.
      That number was down from 46.6 percent in July.
      Also, 35.8 percent opposed membership, edging up 0.5 of a percentage point from July. About 18 percent remain undecided. The margin of error was three percent.
      Latvia and its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Estonia are on track to join the EU in a planned 2004 enlargement, the first former Soviet republics to do so. They regained independence in 1991 after five decades of Soviet rule.
      All three Baltic countries plan referendums on EU membership in 2003.
      Opposition to membership exceeded support in Latvian polls in the first quarter of 2002, as many Latvians were angry about an EU farm funding scheme that they considered stingy.
      But support for membership gained after Latvia and its Baltic neighbours lobbied for a better quota deal for their farmers, with the final outcome still uncertain.
      A Copenhagen EU summit in December is expected to give final approval for 10 mostly Eastern European states to become members, if referendums in the countries succeed.

      BUDAPEST, Oct 20 (Reuters) — Central and Eastern European states queuing to join the European Union gave a collective sigh of relief on Sunday after Ireland voted 'yes' in a referendum to pave the way for the eastern expansion of the bloc.
      With results still coming in, indications were the Irish had voted by a wide margin to back the EU's Nice Treaty which sets the framework for how an expanded EU will work when it adds 10 new, mainly ex-communist states in 2004.
      The 'yes' vote, seen at over 60 percent, will boost bonds, shares and currencies in the candidate countries, particularly Poland and Hungary, when markets open on Monday.
      "This is an unambiguously positive impulse for markets," Jan Vejmelek, analyst at Komercni Bank in Prague, told Reuters.
      The vote, overturning a shock defeat in a referendum on the same issue last year, removes one of the last major obstacles to a smooth enlargement and the historic reunification of a continent riven by two World Wars and the Cold War.
      EU leaders, who meet at a Brussels summit next weekend, are expected to approve a recommendation that at least 10 states — Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta — will be ready to join the bloc within two years.
      "THANK YOU"
      President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, the biggest of the candidates, told reporters: "If the preliminary results are confirmed...we should thank the Irish — all those who understood that even the biggest domestic problems should not overshadow the big idea that EU enlargement will at last overcome the rifts that divided our continent."
      Estonia's Prime Minister Siim Kallas told Reuters: "We wish to thank the Irish people for their decision. For us, Ireland has always been an example of good decision-making."
      Latvia's chief EU negotiator Andris Kesteris said the Irish vote should now allow candidates time to complete difficult EU accession talks over money and farming by the end of the year.
      "This is undoubtedly positive for us as we have now removed a serious factor that could have distorted the process," he told Reuters.
      There had been widespread concern that an Irish 'no' vote could have derailed enlargement for up to two years, upsetting financial markets and risking discontent in eastern Europe where governments have had to make tough economic reforms to get the region into shape to join the EU.
      MARKET BOOST
      Michael Johansson, East Europe analyst at Sweden's SEB bank (SEBa.ST), said the road was now clear for enlargement and removed the threat of insecurity financial markets abhor.
      "Now the currencies are going to strengthen and the (bond) yields are going to come down, especially in Poland and Hungary where the convergence game is mostly centred," he told Reuters.
      Some $15 billion have been ploughed into the so-called convergence play where investors bet on candidate interest rates coming into line with those in the wealthier EU.
      Many of the candidates hope to join the single currency euro zone within two to three years of EU accession.
      Leaders in the candidate countries said they hoped the Irish vote would also give fresh impetus to referendums on EU membership they are due to hold next year.
      "I believe Czech citizens will now also say 'yes' to the EU after the Irish have said 'yes' to expanding the Union," said Czech Foreign Minister Cyril Szoboda.
      "If the results hold, then tonight I can drink a glass of Guinness and sing 'I love you like Ireland'," Poland's Prime Minister Leszek Miller told TVN24 all-news television, referring to a popular Polish ballad.

      BRUSSELS, Oct 21 (Reuters) — The focus in the European Union's race for eastward enlargement switched abruptly back to battles over money on Monday after Irish voters threw open the EU's gates to 10 impatient candidate countries.
      EU foreign ministers were to meet in Luxembourg later in the day to prepare for a Brussels EU summit this week that is due to endorse the 10 candidates to conclude accession talks by mid-December, and set the financial terms to offer them.
      But a Franco-German clash over reforming EU farm subsidies and funding enlargement could well block agreement on a common position when the leaders meet on Thursday and Friday.
      "We have quite a task ahead of us. I'm expecting very tough negotiations," said Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, which holds the rotating EU presidency.
      The removal of the Irish hurdle with Saturday's sweeping 63-37 percent vote in favour of the Nice Treaty designed to prepare EU institutions for enlargement still leaves plenty of landmines to be cleared in the next two months.
      The candidates — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta — voiced delight and gratitude at the Irish vote but some warned EU member states against foot-dragging.
      "We see it as overcoming an extremely important hurdle, not just for enlargement but for the entire process of European integration," Polish European Affairs Minister Danuta Huebner told Reuters.
      But she cautioned: "If there is a delay, it will be very difficult for us to explain this to the public. We know there are still some divergent views. We are waiting for the 15 to agree on the most important issues."
      VERHEUGEN RAPS FRANCE
      Among the obstacles are the caretaker Dutch government's need to win parliamentary support for enlargement, stalled talks on a political settlement to the division of Cyprus, and tension over Turkey's demand for a date to open accession talks.
      Probably the biggest remaining hurdle is the Franco-German battle over farm reform and enlargement funding.
      EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen turned up the heat on France on Monday for failing, in his view, to show willingness to adapt EU farm aid to help fund enlargement.
      Paris last week rejected German proposals to scale down direct payments to farmers in the existing 15 member states by an extra two percent each year from 2004 for a decade to pay for phasing in such benefits to new EU members' farmers.
      "We must keep our strategy to cut EU spending in general in order to facilitate additional spending for EU enlargement," said Verheugen, whose native Germany is keen to ensure its net budget contribution does not rise when new members join.
      When looking at possible savings, Verheugen said it was easy to point to an explosion in agriculture spending.
      "This is where we see a problem. The French have shown little willingness so far to address the issue from this perspective," he told ARD television.
      France says it is premature to discuss changing farm aid before the whole EU budget comes up for review in 2006, by which time the new members will have joined.
      Rasmussen, who has threatened to keep EU leaders in Brussels into the weekend if needed to get a deal on enlargement funding, appeared to side with the French, saying he would put forward proposals consistent with the existing EU budget up to 2006.
      "I can fully understand the wish for future reforms, but I have said that we should not make it a new condition for deciding about enlargement," he told Danish television.
      Rasmussen said most member states favoured Commission proposals to give farmers in the new countries initially 25 percent of what farmers in today's EU receive, and phase in the rest over 10 years.
      "But there are some who say that before we can say 'Yes' to that, we have to decide about future reforms of the EU's agricultural policy to achieve savings in the future," he said.
      "It is mainly Germany but also other countries," he said.
      (additional reporting by Joelle Diderich in Paris and Peter Starck in Copenhagen, Douglas Busvine in Warsaw)

      WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Monday promised NATO Secretary-General George Robertson that the United States will identify within two weeks which nations it wants as new members of the alliance.
      At a summit next month in Prague, NATO leaders are expected to invite the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were once part of the Soviet Union, to join the alliance, along with Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria. The United States has never officially said which nations it wants to join, though the Bush administration seeks a "robust" expansion.
      The issue is delicate, because Moscow sees the expansion plan as a means to bring the former enemy alliance to Russia's doorstep. Robertson sought out Bush's views on Monday, the president said.
      "I told him that we would give him a definite answer about our views on expansion in a couple of weeks, and that timetable seemed satisfactory with him," Bush told reporters at the end of his Oval Office meeting with Robertson.
      Robertson called the gathering in Prague "probably the most important summit meeting in NATO's history, a transformation summit where NATO has to transform itself to deal with the threats and the challenges of the 21st century."

      BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened talks ahead of a European Union summit Thursday, seeking to overcome a dispute over farm spending that threatens to delay the EU's expansion into eastern Europe.
      The talks in a plush Brussels hotel could decide the success or failure of the two-day summit and prove decisive for plans to bring in eight new members from the former communist bloc, plus the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus in 2004.
      France and Germany are deadlocked over how to share out the costs of bringing in the candidates, who are all poorer than the EU average and should be eligible for a generous slice of some 80 billion euros (US$ 79 billion) that the Union gives out to its farmers and poorest regions.
      Schroeder and Chirac have already met twice in recent weeks but made little progress in resolving their differences. Denmark, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, says that if they cannot come to an agreement this week, the timetable for expansion could be jeopardized.
      "It is of paramount importance that we come to a decision on these issues in Brussels in order to be able ... to meet the deadline for conclusion of the negotiations," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen wrote to the other leaders ahead of the summit.
      At the heart of the problem is Germany's demand that the current 15 EU nations commit to cut direct subsidies to farmers after the expansion. If not, the Germans and their supporters warn, an EU plan to phase in handouts to the millions of farmers in Poland and the other newcomers will simply bust the bank.
      "There should be no phasing in (of farm subsidies) without also phasing out," said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Germany's closest ally, ahead of the summit.
      France has resisted cuts in subsidies to its powerful farm lobby for decades and Chirac insists the agricultural handouts cannot be touched until 2006, when the whole EU budget is up for renegotiating.
      Then, warns Chirac, it won't be just farm spending that's on the table but also aid to poor regions so dear to Spain, Greece and Portugal, and Britain's cherished budget rebate.
      The Danes and the EU's head office insist an agreement is needed in Brussels to give the candidate nations needed time to negotiate the subsidy package before they sign on for membership in December at another summit in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
      "We must give candidates time to examine and discuss the proposals," said Guenter Verheugen, the EU commissioner overseeing the expansion talks. "We have (to) avoid a take-it-or-leave it situation."
      However, German and French officials play down the impact of failure this week and pooh-pooh the need for lengthy talks with the candidates.
      "What cannot be agreed in Brussels, can be agreed in Copenhagen," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Tuesday.
      The spending spat has clouded the EU's expansion program, just days after it was boosted by a referendum vote in Ireland that approved the EU's blueprint for taking on the new members.
      Also complicating the issue are objections, again led by Germany, to a plan by the EU's head office to spend 25.5 billion euro (US$24.9 billion) developing economies of the newcomers' poorest regions over the first three years of their membership.
      Germany says that package — which will cover projects ranging from roads and railways to schools and restoring tourist sites — is too much and is proposing 21.4 billion euro (US$20.9 billion).
      Under the expansion timetable, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are due to conclude four years of membership talks at the Copenhagen summit.
      In April, they are scheduled to sign the accession treaties at a ceremony in Athens, Greece, leaving the rest of the year for parliamentary ratification before they join on Jan. 1, 2004.

      BRUSSELS, Oct 24 (Reuters) — France and Germany reached a landmark agreement on Thursday to curb European Union farm spending from 2007, unlocking the final phase of negotiations to enlarge the 15-nation bloc.
      The deal, clinched just before the start of an EU summit, should open the way for the EU to conclude accession talks with 10 mainly east European candidate countries in December so they can join in 2004.
      German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced the breakthrough after private talks with French President Jacques Chirac.
      "We will both take the position that phasing in (of direct farm aid) to acceding countries will start in 2004. From 2007, spending will be capped and will not increase beyond the rate of inflation up to 2013," Schroeder told reporters.
      Chirac confirmed the agreement and said it meant agriculture spending, which accounts for about half the 95 billion euro ($92 billion) EU budget, would be frozen from 2007 at its 2006 level.
      "It is our joint will to control expenditure in all areas, not only on agriculture," the French leader said, saying limits should also apply to structural aid to poorer regions and, in his view, to Britain's annual EU budget rebate.
      Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, hailed the Franco-German accord which should ease his task in brokering a summit agreement on financial terms to offer the candidates.
      "Definitely it has not made this summit more difficult," he told a pre-summit news conference.
      "I feel confident that at the end of the day all EU leaders will realise that we are facing a historic moment, we're going to make a historic decision, and this should not be overshadowed by a detailed discussion on budget and agriculture," he said.
      NET CONTRIBUTORS WORRIED
      Net contributors to the EU budget, such as Germany, are worried at the long-term cost of admitting the mostly ex-communist applicants, including poor agrarian countries such as Poland and Hungary.
      France and other beneficiaries said it was too soon to discuss reforming EU farm policy because the budget, which runs until 2006, could accommodate the costs of enlargement.
      The Franco-German agreement appeared to be a compromise in which Chirac won a respite until 2007 but accepted that aid to French farms would gradually decline as payments to farmers in new member states was phased in.
      The states hoping to join in 2004 are Poland, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.
      Rasmussen had warned that if agreement on the financial terms to offer candidates was not reached now, the EU would fall behind on a tight timetable and enlargement might be delayed.
      European Commission President Romano Prodi stressed that enlargement funding would stay well within the budgetary framework agreed by EU leaders in Berlin in 1999.
      "There will be no cost explosion," he told a news conference.
      The summit was also due to discuss the war on terror, North Korea's nuclear programme and ways of ending a dispute with Russia over travel rules for Kaliningrad residents once Moscow's Baltic enclave is surrounded by EU states after enlargement.
      Seeking to deflect the pressure on Paris over CAP reform, Chirac has raised the issue of Britain's annual budget rebate, won by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, which he said "is less justified today than it was previously."
      Prodi backed Britain's refusal to discuss the rebate, saying it should not be linked to enlargement, and Rasmussen warned that putting the issue on the table would complicate matters.
      One threat to the enlargement timetable receded on Thursday when the Dutch parliament approved government plans to back enlargement, despite continued fears over costs and the candidates' readiness, and voted down calls for a referendum.

      VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — The ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Latvia and Lithuania have tightened security on their borders in the wake of the raid by Chechen rebels on a theater in nearby Russia, officials said Friday.
      Spokesmen said the security upgrades, which they declined to specify, were precautionary measures to ensure that no would-be terrorists could slip through their countries into neighboring Russia.
      "Officers have been advised to pay special attention to people coming to Lithuania from regions in military conflict and also to possible smuggling of explosives and arms," Lithuanian Border Guard chief Algimantas Songaila said.
      Latvian Border Guard spokeswoman Dace Zirdzina said Latvia also stepped up checks on its borders, including with Lithuania. Lithuania doesn't share a border with the Russia mainland and Russian-bound travelers must pass through Latvia.
      The third Baltic state, Estonia, said it hadn't taken any new security measures in response to the hostage crisis in Moscow. "But we are monitoring the situation closely," Estonian Defense Ministry spokesman Madis Mikko said.
      Three Latvians were among several hundred people being held by the Chechen gunmen, according to the foreign ministry.
      Some bilateral contacts between Russia and the Baltic states — which regained independence during the 1991 Soviet collapse — also have been disrupted by the hostage drama.
      Lithuanian Speaker Arturas Paulauskas on Friday canceled a planned visit to meet his counterparts in Moscow, saying "it wouldn't be right to bother a country that is struggling to save the lives of hundreds of its citizens."

      RIGA, Latvia — Friday
      Men
      Quarterfinals
      (Best-of-3)
      Andrew Cain, United States, def. Ahmed Shaheen, Qatar, 181-189, 226-198, 275-241.
      Talal Al-Towereb, Saudi Arabia, def. Wayne Greenall, England, 224-181, 206-204.
      Remy Ong, Singapore. def. Kai Guenther, Germany, 221-187, 268-242.
      Mika Luoto, Finland, def. Paul Trotter, Australia, 215-160, 244-222.
      — — —
      Women
      Quarterfinals
      (Best-of-3)
      Shannon Pluhowsky, United States, def. Teresa Piccini, Mexico, 221-183, 206-177.
      Pascale Moynot, France, def. Sara Vargas, Columbia, 190-182, 194-185.
      Amanda Bradley, Australia, def. Mari Kimura, Japan, 226-181, 190-211, 213-207.
      Nikki Harvey, England, def. Wendy Chai, Malaysia, 200-255, 206-179, 207-195.