The EU aims to start accession talks about six months after the end of its current Inter-Governmental Conference, which seems likely to end in mid-1997.For an entry date of 2000 to be realistic, the terms of admission for the new members will have to include special arrangements to soften the impact of full-blown competition on vulnerable industrial and agricultural sectors. Although Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany and other EU leaders have mentioned this date in the past, the fact that Mr Chirac did so in a speech to both houses of the Polish parliament invested it with a special significance.Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, said in Prague in April that accession negotiations for prospective EU member-states could be completed by 2000 "if everyone worked as hard as the Czechs to become EU members". He anticipated that these countries would become full members of Nato on or before the 50th anniversary of the alliance's foundation. The anniversary falls on 4 April, 1999.Meanwhile, President Jacques Chirac of France said in Warsaw yesterday that he hoped Poland would join the EU by 2000. However, Nato and the EU intend to wait until next year before making public the names of the countries that will be invited to start membership negotiations. The disclosure that Nato aims to accept new members in 1999 was made in London this week by Robert Hunter, the US ambassador at Nato's Brussels headquarters.Addressing the Royal United Services Institute, he said Nato would hold a summit in late spring or early summer next year at which invitations would be issued to certain Central and East European countries. The leading candidates for early membership of Nato and the EU are considered to be the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The enlargement of the two alliances will represent the most far-reaching transformation of the political and security map of Europe since the fall of Communism in 1989.

But Izo, a Muslim, eventually said: "Intelligence builds a country," and we knew we had found List supporters.. Western leaders made clear this week that they aim to incorporate several new Central and East European democracies into Nato in 1999 and the European Union in 2000. Three burly young men at a cafe in the square where a Serb shell landed in May 1995, killing 71, were hesitant to discuss the elections. "During the war, the local government kept Tuzla multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, and we want Bosnia to be like that."Even in Tuzla there is some anxiety about being seen to support the List against the SDA. "I'm not voting for my brother, but for the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina who have suffered so much," Alija Beslagic said.