EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - If the Lisbon Treaty is not in place by June 2009, member states should keep their word on slimming down the European Commission, centre-right MEPs have argued, warning that parliamentarians would be reluctant to support a prolonged mandate for the current team of commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Fewer MEPs, fewer commissioners, argues a Spanish deputy

"Time is against us," Spanish conservative deputy Inigo Mendez de Vigo from the constitutional affairs committee in the European Parliament told journalists on Thursday (9 October), following this week's visit by the Irish foreign minister Micheal Martin in Brussels.

Ireland was originally supposed to indicate what it wants to do about the Lisbon Treaty, a reform of the 27-strong Union that was rejected in June by Irish voters, to the heads of states and governments set to gather for a two-day summit on 15 October.

But Mr Martin confirmed to MEPs on Monday (6 October) that Dublin needs time for "comprehensive research" and only by December does the country "expect to be able... to outline the necessary steps to achieve our objective of continued full engagement in the Union."

Belgrade has expelled the Montenegrin and Macedonian ambassadors in reaction to the two countries' recognition of Kosovo, reports said Friday.

Podgorica and Skopje recognized Kosovo, a territory Serbia still claims as its province, Thursday night, some eight months after it unilaterally declared independence.

Though it was certain to strain ties with Serbia, a major trade and economic partner, Montenegro and Macedonia jointly said they "remain committed to further promotion of ... relations with Serbia."

Montenegrin ambassador, Anka Vojvodic, was immediately told she had 48 hours to leave Serbia. "It is not a clever and political move," Vojvodic was quoted as saying.

Montenegro and Macedonia brought the tally of countries that now recognize Kosovo to 50.

One of the German government's most ambitious and arduously negotiated projects fell victim to the financial crisis on Thursday. The planned IPO of Deutsche Bahn have been put on hold. German commentators have their doubts if it will ever get back on track.

Wave bye-bye to the privatization of German rail. With the global financial crisis showing no sign of abating, German crisis managers find themselves both adjusting future budgetary expectations and reconsidering earlier economic decisions. Among the objects of second-guessing are plans to privatize Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway company. The initial public offering process had been scheduled to begin on Monday and the company, expecting to take in upwards of €4 billion, had already been courting international investors for months.

Thursday, government officials announced that the privatization would be delayed until further notice. "We are not going to put the assets on the capital markets at the wrong time," Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück said.

The postponement is a bitter pill to swallow for Germany's ruling "Grand Coalition" between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. The privatization plans -- which called for the company's passenger, freight and logistic divisions to be spun off into a holding company, 24.9 percent of which was to be privatized -- were the product of months of arduous negotiations between the coalition partners. It was also among the government's few headlining achievements during its three years in power.

OSLO: The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2008 peace prize on Friday to Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has been associated over decades with peace efforts and quiet, cautious diplomacy from Asia to Africa and Europe.

Out of 197 people nominated for the annual prize, the committee said, Ahtisaari had been chosen "for his important efforts in several continents and over three decades to resolve international conflicts."

To outsiders, Ahtisaari, 71, has often seemed an undemonstrative and aloof figure. But some people who worked with him praised what Gareth Evans, the head of the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Brussels called "charm and humor" in dealing with his various negotiating partners.

He has played a central role in ending conflicts that took root in the late 20th century and threatened the early 21st century with conflagrations in many places, some of them remote and all of them complex, presenting mediators with tangles of ethnic

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - With EU states nearing agreement on relaxing Belarus sanctions on Monday (13 October), the man that Minsk hired to help do the job - British public relations magnate Lord Timothy Bell - tells the EUobserver about unmaking the image of a dictator.

"The whole world is absolutely overwhelmed by an off-the-cuff remark by Condoleezza Rice, who as far as I know has neither met him nor been there," Lord Bell said, on the US secretary of state's 2006 bon mot - "the last dictatorship in Europe" - to describe Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko's regime.

Lukashenko talks to media during the latest elections, but selling him in Brussels is about more than placing newspaper stories

"When I go there, I mix perfectly happily with ordinary people. I see a country that has a perfectly nice atmosphere about it, people are very relaxed, people I talk to in hotels, bars and restaurants don't keep looking over their shoulder. But it's being described in the media in the way Ceausescu's Romania was described."

The Belarussian government hired the British peer - who once advised former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and today also represents anti-Kremlin exile Boris Berezovsky - in July to help persuade the EU to drop a visa ban list on Belarus top brass.

EUOBSERVER/TBILISI - Russian troops still remain in some parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia previously controlled by the Georgian police, moves that will be brought up at the upcoming talks in Geneva, minister for re-integration Temuri Yakobashvili told the EUObserver on Friday (10 October).

On the sunny streets of Tbilisi, bordered by impressive plane trees, life seems back to normal after the conflict. "It looks normal, but it's not quite the same", a teenager says when asked about the daily life in the aftermath of the Russian war. The scars are still fresh and visible. Buses still carry English-speaking banners with "Stop the Russian aggression on Georgia," while some bookshops have posters in their windows with the word "Fuck" under Putin's image.

Russian troops still occupy territories that were under Georgian control before the August war.

Meanwhile, in Gori, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said at a press conference on Friday that Russian troops have "partly" withdrawn from the outposts outside the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in line with the 10 October deadline contained within the ceasefire agreement, AFP and Reuters report.

The representative of the French EU presidency who brokered the agreement also stressed that the Russians need to withdraw to the positions they held prior to 7 August, including the Akhalgori district in South Ossetia, which used to be under Georgian control before the war.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is to propose a revision of EU state aid rules to encourage car makers to produce greener cars, as well as an EU aid plan which would allow European car producers to get loans at preferential rates.

Mr Sarkozy, also the current EU chair-in-office, said while attending the World Automobile Fair in Paris on Thursday (9 October) that the EU needs looser state aid rules in order to reach its own goals in the field of its climate and energy package, namely to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to boost the use of renewable energy by 20 percent by the year 2020.

France pledged €400 million over the next four years to support the development of more eco-friendly cars

He added that the US is already offering state aid to its car manufacturers, referring to a vote by the US Congress last week to give cheap loans to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to help them adapt to new emissions rules.

"The US Treasury is preparing to grant $25 million in long-term loans at unbeatable rates to US car makers for them to renovate their plants that are more than 20 years old," the French president said.

TBILISI, Georgia: European leaders confirmed Friday that Russians had met an Oct. 10 deadline to withdraw troops from buffer zones outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, though Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Russia had only "partially complied" with a European-brokered peace accord.

Georgia formally protested the continuing presence of Russian troops in Akhalgori District, an ethnically Georgian section of South Ossetia, and of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, held by Georgian forces until the August war.

In a statement, the Georgian state minister for reintegration, Temuri Yakobashvili, said, "It has become evident that the Russian government is not intending to fulfill" a provision of the French-brokered peace accord that requires both sides to pull back troops to prewar positions. Georgia also said Russia was keeping 7,600 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia - more than were present before the war.

After visiting villages recently ceded back to Georgian control, Kouchner said the peace accord was "being fulfilled gradually." He said European leaders would discuss "the full liberation of Georgia from Russian troops," including the return of refugees and the status of Akhalgori and Kodori, at a meeting in Geneva on Oct. 15.