EU Foreign Ministers have moved close to agreement on how the EU should handle enlargement negotiations with applicantstates. But strong Danish reservations at seeing two Baltic countries left out of the first round of talks have pushed final agreement back to the December Luxembourg summit.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, welcoming the Commission position that talks should begin first with six countries, also put down a marker over the weekend that the summit will have to accept as part of its final conclusions on enlargement a commitment to the continuity of current EU internal policies, most specifically on cohesion and structural funding.
Although diplomats acknowledge that agreement on the details of Ireland's structural funds' "soft landing" will not be finalised until late next year, the "cohesion countries" want to copper-fasten a political commitment to spending on existing EU members.
Mr Andrews also appealed to fellow-ministers to see if the EU could do more about the famine situation in North Korea.
While broadly accepting the Commission proposal for the opening in April of negotiations with the six - Cyprus, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia - ministers are set also to agree the creation of a European conference as a "waiting room" for all 12 current applicants to provide political reassurance to them that they are not being left out permanently in the cold.
Controversially, membership of the conference is likely to include human rights pariahs Turkey and Slovakia, which are not eligible at present for full membership of the EU because of their records.
Ministers agreed that three EU missions will visit Ankara within the month to seek assurances from the government that it will make progress on human rights.
The Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Mr Hans van den Broek, said that it was important to get a signal from Turkey that talks on Cyprus accession could start in an atmosphere free of intimidation and that Ankara should ensure a greater willingness on the part of Turkish-Cypriot leaders to contribute to a political settlement.
But diplomats were insisting that they would not be setting preconditions - a clear majority wants the Turks in the conference, although the Greeks can still veto their participation.
The president of the Foreign Ministers' Council, the Luxembourg Foreign Minister, Mr Jacques Poos, insisted that the accession process would be "inclusive", even if Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia and Lithuania are not to be involved initially in talks.
The EU, he said, had to avoid the language of rejection while making clear that it would have to differentiate between applicants whose economic and political stages of development differed significantly.
Mr Poos emphasised that the progress of all countries towards meeting the requirements of membership would be monitored on an annual basis by the Commission. As they made progress, he stressed, they could join the group involved in direct negotiations.
