EU president warns candidates not to push their luck

The presidency of the European Union has warned candidate countries that they risk setting back their entry date by years if they try to demand better accession terms at next week's Copenhagen summit. The Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting with the French President Jacques Chirak in Paris that the EU had made ultimate concessions in its last offer and candidates should not demand the impossible. Three of the candidates -Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary- are still pushing for a better deal in accession talks and the last minute concessions proposed by Denmark still have to be approved by the governments of the other 14 member states. The Danish Prime Minister expressed confidence that the Copenhagen summit would be a historic success, despite the fact that some of the candidates are not entirely happy with the entry terms and that some EU member states feel that the Danish presidency has been too generous with its final offer.