PARIS (AP) — Edmund Stoiber, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's challenger in upcoming elections, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, discussed the sensitive issue of German funding for European Union programs.
      Chirac "told me he understands perfectly that Germans believe they are paying too much in the European Union and that there's a need to lower their contribution," Stoiber told a news conference after a 75-minute meeting Tuesday at Chirac's presidential residence, the Elysee Palace.
      Germany is a net contributor to the EU's sprawling system of agricultural subsidies, which support European farmers. European leaders are grappling with the issue of how to continue the system as the 15-member EU prepares to accept 10 new nations in 2004.
      Schroeder has said Germany could not bear the financial costs of seeing the present system expanded to cover the newcomers.
      But France, the largest recipient of EU farming subsidies, opposes any reform of the EU's farm program before 2006. Stoiber also voiced opposition.
      "We have a financial framework up until 2006, we can't upset all that now," he said. "Germany is claiming that changes in the farm program should occur before 2004. That is not acceptable, an agreement is an agreement."
      Chirac's spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna, told reporters that Stoiber called during the meeting for a reduction in German contributions to the farm subsidy program. She also said that Stoiber cautioned that the EU's membership expansion plans could be endangered if no "common solution" is found.
      Stoiber was not so forthright during his news conference. But he did suggest that Germany deserved sympathy because the huge costs of reunifying East and West Germany had stretched the country's finances.
      "Chirac understands Germany's desire to reduce our contribution to the European Union because we are facing different situations now from those we faced in the 1980s," said Stoiber, the conservative governor of Bavaria whose party has led Schroeder's ruling Social Democrats in opinion polls ahead of the Sept. 22 elections.
      "Reunification of Germany has been a huge task, it's taken us more than 10 years," he said. "Our partners must understand that we undertook a task that turned out to be much larger than we thought it would be."
      Proposals to expand the EU from 15 to 25 members pose a dilemma because the EU already has some 8 million farmers and will absorb 10 million more from Poland alone.
      The other countries expected to join in 2004 are Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus. Negotiations head for conclusion in December after three years of talking.
      On Monday, EU agriculture ministers rejected proposals to overhaul the farm subsidies ahead of the union's eastward expansion. EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, who met Tuesday in Paris with the French agriculture minister, has proposed deep cuts in the program.

      WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) — U.S. President George W. Bush and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski made the case for a broad expansion for NATO on Wednesday as they agreed to tighten their own military ties.
      Kwasniewski became the first Polish president since 1991 to make a state visit to Washington, an honor given for Poland's support in the war against terrorism and its role as one of the new members of the Western security alliance.
      Calling Kwasniewski "my friend," Bush said the two nations would increase their military cooperation. This could include training, joint work to defend against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and cooperation among special forces.
      Having joined NATO in 1999 in its first wave of post-Cold War enlargement along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, Poland's voice carries some sway with the United States, which has been pushing for broad expansion of the alliance.
      "On this issue, Poland and America stand united: we believe in NATO membership for all European democracies ready to share in NATO's responsibilities," Bush said, adding what may be a hint on how far he wants it to expand. "Our aim is for freedom and security to span the European continent, from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea."
      As many as seven nations may be asked to join NATO at an alliance summit in Prague this November. Among those seen as most likely are the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia.
      The United States has sent clear signals that it would like Bulgaria and Romania, which sit on the Black Sea, to join NATO. Slovakia, which once appeared to be a near certainty, could be rejected if elections due in September return a nationalistic government led by former Premier Vladimir Meciar.
      Kwasniewski broadly hinted that he wanted all seven invited to join in Prague, saying: "Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, our friends from Slovakia, and our close partners from Bulgaria and Romania and Slovenia will be welcomed there."
      RED CARPET TREATMENT
      Albania and Macedonia are both expected to be excluded in this round of enlargement to the 19-member alliance, which was founded to counter the Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union.
      U.S. officials say among the key criteria for membership are how deeply democratic and free-market reforms have taken root in the countries, how firmly civilian authorities control their militaries, and how modern their armed forces are.
      Bush rolled out the red carpet for Kwasniewski, holding a White House South Lawn welcoming ceremony complete with a fife and drum corps and a 21-gun salute, followed by Oval Office talks and a formal East Room news conference. Later, the two men and their wives were to dine at a black-tie state dinner.
      At the news conference, Bush said he wanted the two nations to increase their economic ties and the White House said U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans would visit Poland next year to work on trade disputes and to promote commercial ties.
      The leaders, who aides said hit it off when Bush paid a state visit to Poland in June 2001, lavished praise on each other's nations and the U.S. president appeared to encourage Poland to play a major role in European affairs.
      In particular, Bush said that Kwasniewski's Riga initiative to prevent a "velvet curtain" from being drawn across Europe between those nations who join the European Union and NATO and those who do not had captured his imagination.
      Bush called Poland a "mature" democracy, thanked it for its support in the war on terrorism, and noted that Kwasniewski's visit marked only the second state visit of his administration, following Mexican President Vicente Fox's in September 2001.
      Kwasniewski stressed that Polish soldiers are serving from the Balkans to Afghanistan and said his nation was ready to share responsibility for European and global security, saying "Poland is (a) steadfast ally of the United States."
      Bush and Kwasniewski hit the road together on Thursday, flying to Troy, Michigan, home to a large Polish American community in a state Bush lost to former Vice President Al Gore in 2000. The trip may help Bush among the 9 million Americans who claim Polish descent, a major voting block in the Midwest.

      HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Thursday his country would "react" if NATO builds bases in the three former Soviet Baltic republics that are hoping to join the alliance, and he did not rule out military measures.
      "We would very much not like to carry out any military actions, but we cannot rule this out," Ivanov said, without elaborating.
      "If NATO bases appear in the Baltics within 200 kilometers (120 miles) of the Russian border, of course, we must react," Ivanov added, but did not say how.
      Ivanov spoke to reporters during a visit to Turku, 170 kilometers (100 miles) west of the capital, Helsinki, after meeting Finnish Defense Minister Jan-Erik Enestam.
      He reiterated that Russia considers NATO expansion a mistake but said "each country has the right to determine which military blocs to take part in."
      The Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, have made joining NATO a priority since they regained independence in 1991 after five decades of Soviet occupation. They are widely expected to be invited to join the alliance at a summit in November in the Czech capital of Prague.
      Ivanov said his country did not aim to become a NATO member, "just as NATO is not aiming for Russia to join it."
      Russia opposes the eastward expansion of its former Cold War enemy toward its borders, which it sees as a security threat, but has softened its rhetoric and strengthened cooperation agreements with NATO in recent months.
      Later Thursday, Ivanov dined with President Tarja Halonen. On Friday, he was scheduled to tour military installations and meet with Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, before returning to Moscow.

      SEATTLE (AP) — A group of Seattle singers organizing a series of worldwide performances of Mozart's "Requiem" for Sept. 11 say they have gotten thousands of e-mails in support of the idea.
      "The heartfelt nature of their responses is remarkable," said Madeline Johnson, chairwoman of the Rolling Requiem Committee and a member of the Seattle Symphony Chorale. "It shows there is a worldwide longing to give voice to healing, to hope, to love."
      Thirty choirs from around the world have signed up to take part in the "Rolling Requiem" and many more are considering joining, Johnson said.
      A choir in Riga, Latvia, was among the first to respond, writing, "Not only will we sing in our country's largest performance space, we are inviting choirs from all over our country to join us."
      A Boston choir responded that the invitation left some members in tears. A backer of the idea in Wales invited 200 Welsh choirs. A singing group in Taipei is organizing a network of Taiwanese choirs.
      Each performance is to begin at 8:46 a.m. — the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York -- starting at the international date line and moving westward by time zone.
      Organizers say a list of those who died in the attacks will be given to each choir, and each singer will make a heart badge with one of the names to wear.
      The Seattle Symphony's music director, Gerard Schwarz, will conduct the "Requiem" at the city's Paramount Theater, leading about 50 orchestra members, a chorus of 120 and four soloists.
      "As far as I'm concerned, nothing is more appropriate than a requiem, and there is no requiem more appropriate than the Mozart `Requiem,'" Schwarz said.
      Jack McAuliffe, chief operating officer for the American Symphony Orchestra League, said many of the organization's 900 member orchestras already had been planning commemorative concerts by the time he learned about the Rolling Requiem earlier this week. His group will poll members to see if they would like to join the effort.
      The idea for the Rolling Requiem began with a suggestion from a music lover who bumped into Terry Blumer, a baritone with the Seattle Symphony Chorale, on the street in January after a performance by the group. The woman, whose name Blumer did not know, suggested that choruses form a ring around Ground Zero on Sept. 11 and sing Mozart's "Requiem."
      "She said, 'Surely there would be enough of you for there to be one voice for every loss,'" Blumer said this week.
      A few members of the chorale formed a committee and decided to organize two even grander efforts. One was the Rolling Requiem. The other was to invite singers from around the world to commemorate the first anniversary of the attacks at each crash site -- New York, the Pentagon and Somerset County, Pa.
      Kathleen Ferrari, an alto in the chorale and one of the Rolling Requiem organizers, is the daughter of a retired New York City firefighter who lost six members of the Crown Heights ladder company he once led.
      "It's going to be very difficult," Ferrari said. "Just thinking about it now makes me want to cry. I think with a lot of tissues and a lot of sniffling, we'll get through it."

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      On the Net: www.rollingrequiem.org

      Latvia — I took a short, sleepy train ride to the Baltic resort of Jurmala. It is not really one place, but rather a chain of connected towns and villages, strung along 20 kilometres of beaches and forest.
      In the days of the old Soviet Union, Jurmala was the retirement location of choice for senior officials and army generals. Many of the hotels and boarding houses dotted around among the trees were owned by institutions.
      Holidays in this pretty corner of the Soviet empire were on offer as rewards for thousands of especially hard workers.
      But over a decade after Latvia broke free of the Soviet Union, the language of choice in Jurmala is still Russian. Most of the writing is still in Latvian. But the families slurping ice-creams in cafes, the sunbathers, the beach volleyball players - were all speaking Russian.
      I found a similar situation in Riga too. Around the station and central market all of the magazines and greetings cards being sold from stalls were in Russian.
      Ethnic divide The people looked and sounded different from those in the beautiful old town centre, which had a far more Scandinavian atmosphere.
      The ethnic divide is Latvia's trickiest historical legacy. In fact only just over half of Latvians are indeed Latvian. In Riga and most other cities, Latvians are in the minority.
      Latvia has always had many non-Latvians living there, but the Soviet era brought a policy of deliberate 'Russification'. Russians were brought over and given many of the best jobs and flats.
      Some have since returned to Russia, and the government has toned down some of its more anti-Russian requirements for Latvian citizenship.
      But the fact remains, Latvia is a divided country.
      "For us it's a constant reminder that we are insecure," Juris, a waiter in one old town restaurant, explained to me.
      He told me that he knew quite a few Latvians who were married to Russians, but said that generally the two communities tend to stay apart.
      Juris said Russia had always created problems for his country throughout its history, and that's why joining the West was so important to him.
      'A better life'
      It is this historically threatening presence of Latvia's gigantic eastern neighbour that explains the country's determination to join NATO and the European Union.
      NATO provided security, and for people like Juris the EU provided the chance of a better life.
      He was working as a waiter to help fund his university studies, and was optimistic about the future. But Juris said his parents were more pessimistic.
      They felt the Russian population of Latvia would keep the country tied to the east. It was a case of one generation looking forward, the other glancing nervously backwards over its shoulder.
      A journalist friend who lived in Riga said Latvia's future was in effect a choice between two ways for Russians and Latvians to coexist.
      He said they could choose what he called the Belgian model, with two communities not mixing, but rather just choosing to get along and progress.
      Or, he said, if the two kept pulling in different directions, there was the Bosnian model.
      Even optimists like Juris admit that EU and NATO membership will not alleviate the problems facing a small Baltic nation still finding its feet - and its identity - after half a century of Communism.
      But there's little doubt that the embrace of Western institutions will bring benefits for Latvia as a whole.
      And Juris and many other young people from both communities, would be quite happy for Latvia to take on the next phase of its history as the Baltic answer to Belgium.

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      On the Net: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_2139000/2139416.stm