EU: The Government has said it was encouraged by signs of compromise on the EU constitutional treaty by Poland but officials played down suggestions that a deal was imminent, write Arthur Beesley and Derek Scally in Berlin.
With the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, expected to call at next week's EU summit for a resumption of the treaty negotiations, officials are privately more hopeful of agreement after positive signals from the Poles and the incoming Spanish government.
But while the Government is cautious about prospects of a deal in what is described as a delicate phase in the process, the private assessment of Irish officials is that there has been no significant change "at this time" in the negotiation positions of Spain or Poland.
Poland and Spain have so far opposed any compromise over voting powers in the constitution, putting them at odds with France and Germany.
However, the Polish Prime Minister, Mr Leszek Miller, told reporters this week he would be asking Mr Ahern to restart talks on the treaty.
Mr Miller said Poland did not want to be isolated after the incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Mr José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, indicated his government would abandon Madrid's objection to the "double majority" voting system in the EU Council of Ministers.
"The comments from the Polish government representatives were clearly encouraging," said a spokesman for the Irish EU presidency.
However, Poland sounded a note of caution yesterday on how far it was prepared to go on negotiations, and denied it now accepted the so-called double majority principle favoured by Germany and France.
Senior government officials dismissed "inaccurate media exaggeration" of changes in the Polish position and said to await the outcome of next week's visit to Warsaw of Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
"We are ready to compromise but we didn't enter into discussion of the details. I hope after next week's meeting to see a strong push-off from the details but we don't exclude any solution at the moment," said Prof Tadeusz Iwinski, an adviser to the Polish Prime Minister.
Earlier in the day, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw said a deal based on the double-majority principle was likely, opening the way to the ratification of the EU constitution under the Irish presidency.
"We cannot turn a blind eye to the current trend in the European Union. We are open to a compromise based on the double majority," the official told The Irish Times. "But how much of a compromise will very much depend on the position of the French and German governments."
Political analysts in Warsaw say that, despite raised expectations, it is too soon to talk of a breakthrough. "We still have to find a result with contents that are acceptable politically and psychologically," said Mr Janusz Reiter, head of the Centre for International Relations in Warsaw.
He said the crucial issue remained how to make concessions to Poland that would save face at home and reassure Warsaw that it would not be over-voted on important issues such as the EU budget.
A deal that is perceived in Poland as a sell-out could be the death knell for Mr Miller. His government has less than 10 per cent of support and is under sustained attack from the opposition, which formulated the so-called "Nice or Death" strategy, as well as from a growing internal opposition.
Government sources in Warsaw say the Irish presidency now needs to make palatable to Poles what was always going to be an unpopular decision.
Warsaw's preferred way of doing this would be for the Poles to win a symbolic concession on the so-called "revisiting clause" - laying down the terms of the double majority voting system now but voting on it later.
The Government is preparing to disclose its position next Wednesday as diplomatic activity intensifies ahead of a formal discussion between EU leaders on Thursday night.
Early indications of the Irish position are expected on Monday when Mr Ahern meets in Paris with the French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, and when the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, gives a briefing to his EU counterparts in Brussels.
While the Government is expected to say the stalled inter-governmental conference should be reconvened, official sources said yesterday the final assessment had yet to be made.
After an intensive series of engagements since the start of the year in which Mr Ahern sought the views of each EU leader, the Government's position paper is expected to be short. It will not contain specific proposals for agreement.
If agreed, an inter-governmental conference is not likely to reconvene until after Mr Zapatero takes office in late April. His predecessor, Mr José María Aznar, was a staunch opponent of double-majority system.