EU: Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has said that the row over Mr Silvio Berlusconi's Nazi jibe must not get in the way of the successful drafting of the EU's new constitution.
"For us, the matter has been resolved by Mr Berlusconi's apology. What we want is a successful Italian Presidency in the interests of Europe," he said.
Mr Fischer was speaking in Brussels at the start of the first of two special sessions of the Convention on the Future of Europe. EU leaders agreed last month to allow the convention to reconvene for "technical" work on Part III of the draft constitution.
The chairman, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, warned the convention against attempting to reopen the compromises agreed last month.
"We cannot accept amendments attacking the consensus we reached on Parts I and II of the text," he said.
Mr Giscard said that the response of the EU leaders to the draft text was more positive than he could have anticipated, but he acknowledged that governments would attempt to use the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) that will begin in October to win concessions.