Poland standing firm over EU Constitution

"It will be a miracle if we reach an agreement," admitted Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi late yesterday. No other country from the present and aspiring member states expressed such a hard statement. It has never been the case in the history of the integration process that any agreement was broken due to the defiance of one state. However, 40% of the Polish public believe that the Constitution should be rejected, while 35% of them say that it should be accepted. On Thursday Kwaśniewski was trying to reach agreement with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but the meeting ended in a fiasco. At the last minute it was announced that Prime Minister Leszek Miller will go to Brussels. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, A3-4) M.M.