She said: The Home Secretary this morning telephoned the Dutch Interior Minister to make it clear that we won’t sign up to an

She said: “The Home Secretary this morning telephoned the Dutch Interior Minister to make it clear that we won’t sign up to an EU processing centre, any common border guard that would involve taking away our own border controls or any new EU consular service.”But the UK does back proposals to move to qualified majority voting on asylum and immigration issues. Yesterday a Home Office spokeswoman said the British government would oppose the creation of a common asylum system. He said: “When there is an amnesty in one country it has immediate consequences for the situation of all immigrants in all member states, most of all for those in countries where there are no border controls [because of the Schengen free-travel zone].”Also to be debated are proposals for an EU asylum office and joint processing of asylum claims, made inside or outside the EU. Mr Vitorino cited the example of countries that, periodically, offer to regularise illegal immigrants, as Belgium has done. Britain, Ireland and Denmark have opt-outs in most areas and the UK can remain outside most policies it dislikes.But diplomats expect the justice and home affairs portfolio to be the biggest growth area of policy in the next few years because of the sensitivity of immigration and terrorism.Antonio Vitorino, outgoing European commissioner for justice and home affairs, told The Independent, that, with an ageing population in Europe, illegal immigration and potential labour shortages, “we must have a system of co-ordination of economic immigration”.He said governments should retain the prerogative “to define the number and the profile of the economic immigrants admitted”. The talks will cover moves to scrap the veto on immigration and asylum policy, a proposal to set up a European public prosecutor to combat fraud, and ideas for EU asylum-processing camps in north Africa.Though the ideas will alarm Eurosceptics, the UK can afford to be relaxed about most of the programme, which is being assembled by the Dutch presidency of the EU for outline approval.

European Union justice and interior ministers will debate one of the most ambitious set of plans put to them today, including the creation of an EU asylum office, joint processing of refugee claims and establishment of an EU border guard.
The ministers, who meet in Luxembourg to consider a five-year strategy programme, will also discuss co-ordinating policies on economic immigrants. The UN has to find a framework in which the minority Serbs run their affairs without fear of attack from ethnic Albanians.Mr Rugova yesterday dismissed the importance of the Serb electoral boycott, saying it would make no difference to the scramble for independence.Western diplomats consider Mr Jessen-Petersen the ablest of the six UN “viceroys”.. But Dushka Anastasijevic of the European Stability Initiative says the plan is a disguised proposal intended to divide the territory, with Serbia grabbing Kosovo north of the River Ibar.The polls passed off without any major clashes but Serbs complained of death threats by nationalist thugs to keep them away from polling stations.Kosovo’s chief UN administrator, Soren Jessen-Petersen, blamed intimidation for the boycott. But the low turnout casts doubt on the legitimacy of those representatives. Western diplomats say the Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is sure to argue the boycott amounts to support for the Serbian government’s plan for the decentralisation of Kosovo. But hardline Serb leaders were jubilant that only 0.3 per cent of the Serb minority of 80,000 people had cast ballots, responding to appeals to spurn the election on the ground that their participation would give legitimacy to the Kosovo assembly’s drive to achieve independence soon after talks on the status of the UN-administered province begin in mid-2005.Under the electoral rules the Serb community will receive 10 seats in Kosovo’s 120-seat parliament.

He vowed he quickly would take the province into independence from Serbia after estimates by independent observers showed that his Democratic League of Kosovo garnered 47 per cent of the vote.Mr Rugova’s main rival, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, took 27 per cent and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo was third with 8 per cent while the new Ora party won 6 per cent. A Serb boycott of Kosovo’s general election increased tension between ethnic communities yesterday, raising the prospect that ethnic Albanian leaders may declare unilateral independence if the United Nations fails to define the future status of the troubled Balkan province.
Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo’s pacifist President, yesterday claimed victory in Saturday’s contest. In the first round of elections held on 10 October, Labour garnered 28.6 per cent of the popular vote, outstripping the second-place coalition of outgoing Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas by eight percentage points.Mr Uspaskich has been ridiculed by opponents as a pork-barrelling populist He has promised to raise pensions and lower taxes.. But in a country with bitter memories of its Soviet past, Mr Uspaskich’s Russian ethnicity- along with his controversial politics – have caused consternation among many in the political elite.As Lithuanians went to the polls in the final round of parliamentary elections yesterday, Uspaskich’s recently-formed Labour Party was poised to trounce both the ruling leftist coalition and establishment parties of the right. Yet Viktor Uspaskich’s exotic moniker has provided little resistance in his climb to the pinnacle of politics.
As Lithuania’s richest MP who, in part, amassed his fortune thorugh his massive pickle factory, Uspaskich, 45, would make a colourful prime minister by any country’s standards. Will he be in Millau on 17 December for the opening of his bridge? “Nothing would keep me away.”.

Lithuanian tongues have trouble getting around his name. In other words, the perennial traffic jams around Millau are likely, for several years, to be transferred 60 miles to the south.None of that is Lord Foster’s pr oblem. As a result of planning delays, the road onward from the bridge – performing a series of spectacular bends from the high plateau down to the coastal plain – is far behind schedule.The last sections, linking the A75 to the A9 south coast motorway, at Montpellier and Beziers, have not even been started yet. What I would not like to see beneath the bridge – and I have been quite firm about this – is the kind of sprawl that you see on the edge of so many French towns.” A public inquiry has been ordered to consider this question and will report in December, at about the time the bridge opens.What will not be ready for the opening date – and will not even be ready for the first big tourist rush over the viaduct next summer – is the rest of the A75 autoroute to the south coast. He fears that the popularity of the viaduct – and the determination of local politicians to attract tourists – may result in a kind of strip-mall in the valley beneath the bridge.”I am not at all opposed to there being a visitor centre and that the temporary roads built to help construct the bridge should be retained if they are really needed. That is the subject of a talk that I am giving shortly in Madrid.”Lord Foster is also anxious that “his bridge” should retain its grandiose, natural setting. “I’ve been saying for a long time that our lives are largely shaped by our infrastructure and we should therefore take care of what our infrastructure looks like.