Samoobrona left out of EU constitutional talks with president Kwaśniewski

President Aleksander Kwaśniewski yesterday met with leaders from all the political parties, excluding Self-Defense (Samoobrona) to come up with an opinion on the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union. According to the head of Law and Justice (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, participants of the meeting generally supported a negative stand of the government towards the draft of the European constitution. Government officials recently declared Poland does not agree to modify the fragment of the constitution which envisages it beneficial for Poles in the division of votes in the European Union Council. The recently submitted project envisages that Poland's votes would be twice as weak as that of Germany. The government will also promote its view to link the content of the constitution to Christianity. Jerzy Jaskiernia, head of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) parliamentary club, announced after the meeting how similar opinions are of the different parties concerning what Poland wants to achieve as a EU member. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A5) A.K.