Berlin - The European Union's Swedish presidency will set the date within days for an EU summit to decide who should be the bloc's first president, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said Monday. "I will call a summit within a matter of days," Reinfeldt told journalists in Berlin on the sidelines of celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But in deference to the occasion, he said he would not raise the question at a formal dinner on Monday night, even though EU power-brokers including Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy were set to be present.
Reinfeldt currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, and as such is tasked with negotiating with national leaders on who should be the bloc's first full-time president.
"The EU has many heads of government, and I want to do this thoroughly. Out of that process will emerge who has support and who doesn't," Reinfeldt said.
He is currently "about halfway" through the process of calling national leaders, he said.
The EU's Lisbon Treaty, which creates the posts of president and foreign policy director, is expected to come into force on December 1. National leaders are currently debating who should get the jobs.
Merkel, Brown, Reinfeldt and Sarkozy are expected to be kingmakers in the double debate on who should become the EU's president and high representative - a debate complicated by the need to balance the demands of 27 EU members.
"The two (positions) are linked: everyone understands that we need to balance big and small (countries), right and left, north and south," Reinfeldt said.
According to diplomats in Brussels, the prime ministers of Belgium and the Netherlands, Herman Van Rompuy and Jan Peter Balkenende, are front-runners to claim the post of EU president.
Britain's former premier Tony Blair and Latvia's former president Vaira Vike-Freiberga have also been linked with the top job, but are thought unlikely to make the running.
Britain's foreign minister David Miliband is cited by diplomats as the man most mentioned in connection with the high representative's post, but he has repeatedly denied interest in the role.
Austrian daily Der Standard reported on Monday that Miliband had refused an offer of the job from the EU's top socialist, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, one of the key negotiators on the issue.
Italy's former foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, is also mentioned, although formerly Communist member states in Central and Eastern Europe say that his ties to Italy's Communist party count against him.
"I will start with a blank piece of paper and I will ask the elected governments what they think and take it from there ... It is not always certain that those mentioned in the speculation will be the final ones on my blank piece of paper," Reinfeldt said.
Earlier on Monday, German officials said that the summit would probably be held on November 14, 15 or 18. However, Reinfeldt is set to host Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at an EU-Russia summit in Stockholm on November 18, making that date unlikely.
