Brussels - Weeks after causing an uproar by describing Barack Obama as "suntanned," Silvio Berlusconi arrived in Brussels on Thursday sporting a watch featuring the president-elect's face.

"I shan't wear it, I just brought it to make my colleagues laugh," Berlusconi was quoted by the Italian media as saying.

The maverick premier had refused to apologize for his quip at a special EU summit on the global financial crisis in November, insisting instead that he had meant to pay Obama a compliment.

Brussels - The European Union is ready to look at a bid from Iceland to join the bloc, the EU's top enlargement official said in Brussels on Thursday.

The European Commission, the EU's executive, is "mentally prepared" for a membership proposal from Iceland early in 2009, and negotiations could be swift because the island state already has such close ties with Europe, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said.

Brussels - Police in Belgium

Brussels - European Union leaders were Thursday expected to agree on keeping a rule allowing each member state to nominate a member of the European Commission in 2014, in a move designed to convince Ireland to approve the reforming Lisbon Treaty.

"The European Council agrees that provided the Lisbon Treaty enters into force, a decision will be taken, in accordance with the necessary legal procedures, to the effect that the commission shall continue to include one national of each member state," reads a draft statement seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, due to be discussed by EU leaders at a summit in Brussels.

Brussels - The French presidency of the European Union on Thursday proposed a watered-down set of laws on fighting climate change in a bid to win EU backing at a crucial end-of-year summit.

In Brussels, EU leaders are set to debate a series of proposals from the bloc's executive, the European Commission, aimed at cutting emissions of greenhouse gases to
20 per cent below 1990 levels, in line with a pledge made by heads of state and government in March 2007.