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Brussels: European Union leaders will press Ireland this week on ways to overcome its rejection of an EU reform treaty, but Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said the bloc must also contribute to a solution.
Foreign ministers will explore options at a regular meeting in Luxembourg on Monday and the real show-down will come when Cowen meets his EU counterparts at a two-day crisis summit in Brussels starting on Thursday.
"As things stand if there is no change, if there are no political developments, if we can't come up with any solutions then obviously this treaty does not proceed," Cowen said on Sunday.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the weekend France and Germany had British backing for their appeal to capitals to pursue ratification of the text, which backers say is vital to give the bloc more economic and diplomatic clout.
As long as Prime Minister Gordon Brown defies domestic calls to suspend ratification, the onus is on Dublin to salvage a treaty already rubber-stamped by 18 of the bloc's 27 states.
"I want Europe to try and provide some of the solution as well as just suggesting that it is just Ireland's problem alone," Cowen told public broadcaster RTE on Sunday.
France's junior minister for European affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet hoped "an intelligent political solution" could be reached.
"For the moment, I do not have this solution to hand and no one does," he told France's Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
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