EU agrees on anti-terrorism official

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European leaders named a former Dutch minister Thursday to coordinate new counterterrorism efforts at their first summit since the deadly Spanish rail bombings exposed the continent's vulnerability to terror attacks.\nPresidents and prime ministers from 25 nations approved Gijs de Vries, a former Dutch deputy interior minister, for the post.\n"Today, the European Union has reinforced its unity of purpose ... to fight the scourge of terrorism," said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who chaired the meeting.\nThe European leaders met a day after many of them joined tearful relatives of the 190 victims of the Madrid bombings at a state funeral in the Spanish capital.\nAhern said leaders signed off on a draft of emergency measures to improve cooperation between their police and intelligence services, enact laws on an EU-wide arrest warrant, beef up border controls and create a European database of terror suspects.\nA sense of embattled unity engendered by the Madrid bombings has seen nations bury old differences that go beyond the immediate response to terrorism. In an effort to strengthen ties, the leaders also were expected to reopen talks on the EU's first constitution, three months after they broke down in acrimonious stalemate.\nDe Vries was born in New York and holds joint U.S.-Dutch citizenship. Details of his new role were not fully defined, but he will report to Javier Solana, who heads the EU's foreign and security department.\nThe leaders also will study ways to streamline the sharing of information on threat groups, but they stayed away from establishing a European intelligence agency modeled after the CIA, which Belgium and Austria have proposed.\nOn the constitution, Ahern said bilateral talks with EU leaders since January have revealed "a strong shared sense of the desirability of concluding negotiations as soon as possible."\nThe leaders were expected to restart negotiations and set a June deadline for concluding the talks, officials said. The talks collapsed in December when Spain and Poland opposed a draft reducing their voting power.\n"I am confident of concluding before the end of the semester," EU Commission President Romano Prodi said.\nOptimism has surged since the March 14 election defeat of Spanish Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar's conservative party by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a socialist, who is more eager to find a breakthrough.\nAs a result, Poland also has eased its opposition to the charter.\n"We do not exclude the possibility of a compromise," Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said.\nHowever, it remained unclear how the issue of weighted votes in an EU of 25 nations could be settled.\nThe constitution contains housekeeping reforms that effectively determine the power individual governments wield in EU policy and decision-making.\nThe draft constitution provides for decisions to be valid if half the EU states that represent at least 60 percent of the Union's population endorse a measure. This has not yet been agreed upon.\nCimoszewicz met with several EU leaders -- including the Belgian, Dutch, Hungarian and Czech prime ministers -- who said later they hoped the constitutional negotiations could be completed in time for the June 10 through 13 European Parliament elections.\nIt was unclear how the contentious voting rights issue would be resolved.\n"A lot will depend on the details," Cimoszewicz said.\nAlso still in dispute is the size of the European Commission. The draft charter foresees each nation providing one commissioner, which would make for a top-heavy 25-member executive.\nThe draft constitution aims to make decision-making in an EU of 25 more efficient and aims to boost the EU's role on the world stage by creating an EU president and foreign minister. It also proposes closer defense cooperation.\nThe leaders also will discuss ways to rein in public debt and overhaul health and pension plans -- key steps aimed at boosting economic growth and creating jobs under an ambitious plan to make Europe the world's most competitive economy by 2010.