EU Warns Candidates Against Expecting Dates.

The EU's enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen told a news conference at the start of a new round of negotiations with 12 hopefuls it would be premature to mull setting a target date before he assesses the candidates' progress in early November. Six front running candidates - Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia - entered membership talks in March 1998 and are clamoring for EU leaders to set a target date when they and the EU meet in Nice in December. Verheugen told a joint news conference with the 12 candidate countries it would make no sense to mull dates, before the EU executive assesses how well front running candidates are doing in its November progress reports. He promised that the EU, in a bid to move the talks forward, would set out what he described as a "road map" in the second half of the year detailing what candidates have to do. At separate negotiating sessions starting with Cyprus on Tuesday evening and continuing with other candidates throughout Wednesday, the EU was to open talks on the only remaining and most difficult issue of agriculture with the six frontrunners. On Wednesday the EU was also to meet with six countries, which entered membership talks only in February - Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Bulgaria and Romania, which are still negotiating the easiest issues.