Brussels  - The situation of human rights in Belarus topped the agenda on Friday as the European Union's top diplomat and the Council of Europe's human-rights commissioner met in Brussels.

EU High Representative Javier Solana and Council of Europe commissioner Thomas Hammarberg discussed human rights and political freedoms in Belarus, a statement from Solana's office said.

The two men's meeting came a day after Solana paid his first ever visit to Belarus, in a move seen as indicating the growing desire for a rapprochement in Minsk and Brussels.

Brussels - A meeting of the leaders of the crisis-hit countries of Central and Eastern Europe set for March 1 is not a sign of panic or a split within the European Union, diplomats from the countries involved said Friday.

EU leaders are set to hold an emergency summit on the economic crisis on that date, and the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltic states, Bulgaria and Romania are due to hold a meeting of their own just before it.

Brussels - The European Union's explosive expansion across Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 was an economic success, despite the financial turmoil now sweeping the region, the EU's executive said on Friday.

"The enlargement has emerged as a major success for the EU and its citizens ... It has greatly boosted the economies and improved living standards in the new member states, thereby also benefiting the old member states," the European Commission wrote in a report.

London/Brussels - Some of the world's top banks have pledged to deal through central clearing houses when trading credit default swaps (CDS) in the European Union, EU officials said Thursday.

But bankers and EU staff alike sidestepped a reported French call for the countries which use the euro to set up a clearing house in Paris to counter the weight of London and New York, saying that they did not care where the business was carried out.

The Brussels-based European Banking Federation (EBF) "has no preference as to the location of the (one or more) central counterparties, but above all it wishes for

Brussels- The world's 20 greatest powers (G20) must revive the moribund Doha round of talks on an international trade agreement to stave off the threat of protectionism sparked by the economic crisis, the head of the EU's executive said on Thursday.

"We are seeing outside Europe big pushes for protectionism. .. It will destroy jobs and the possibility for growth in the global economy," Jose Manuel Barroso told journalists in Brussels.

Brussels- The European Union's executive on Wednesday warned six member states, including France, that they are going too deeply into debt as they struggle to ward off recession, opening a formal process which could in the end lead to legal proceedings.

Euro users France, Greece, Ireland, Malta and Spain, and non-euro country Latvia, saw their government deficits surge to more than 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008.