Eastern European countries including Lithuania and Slovenia will today oppose U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposals to cut the European Union's 50 billion euros ($61 billion) in agriculture subsidies, government officials said.

Eastern countries are seeking to hold onto financial aid that they started receiving after joining the EU last year. The aid is scheduled to increase gradually to western European levels by 2013. The payments to Eastern countries started last year at 25 percent of the amount received by their French or German counterparts.

``We've not yet had the opportunity to eat all the cake that the old member states have been eating for many years,'' said Vaidotas Asmonas, an agricultural negotiator for Lithuania, which is more dependent on farm jobs than any other EU country. ``If they are proposing the same level of cuts for the whole 25 countries then we definitely disagree.''

The U.K., which took over the rotating presidency of the EU this month, has attacked the agricultural system since getting into the EU in 1973. In 1984 then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won a refund of from the EU budget to compensate for Britain's disproportionately small share of farm aid.