Brussels - The European Union's Lisbon Treaty is not likely to be in place before European Parliament elections in June 2009, postponing some of its key reforms for at least five years, Luxembourg's influential prime minister said Wednesday.

"I do not think the treaty will be in place by June 2009," Jean-Claude Juncker said at a briefing with the European Policy Centre in Brussels.

The EU is grappling with the question of how to respond to Irish voters' rejection of the treaty at a referendum on June 12. The vote means the treaty cannot come into force anywhere in the EU unless the Irish government finds a way to ratify it, possibly by calling a second referendum.

Brussels - Despite some progress, women remain grossly under- represented in European politics.

Slightly fewer than one third of the European Parliament's (EP) 785 seats are occupied by women, while only nine of the EU's 27 commissioners are female.

On Tuesday, a group of leading women politicians launched a campaign in Brussels aimed at bridging this gender gap when the composition of the EP and the European Commission come up for renewal next year.

"A representative democracy without gender equality is a contradiction in terms," said Margot Wallstrom, a Swede who acts as one of the commission's five vice-presidents.

Havana - The Cuban government under new leader Raul Castro has approach the European Union about a resumption of political dialogue halted since 2003, EU representative in Havana Javier Nino told

Brussels  - European Union officials Tuesday said Uzbekistan had made important progress on human rights issues, but insisted that it was still too early to say whether the progress had been enough to convince the bloc to lift a travel ban on Uzbek regime members.

The EU has "noted the progress Uzbekistan has made, such as the abolition of the death penalty ... and the release of political prisoners," French Minister for Europe Jean-Pierre Jouyet, who chaired the meeting of the EU-Uzbekistan cooperation council, said.

Manila - The European Union (EU) on Tuesday called for an early resumption of stalled peace talks between the Philippine government and Muslim separatist rebels, as it expressed alarm over escalating violence in the country's troubled south.

The EU also urged the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to "show restraint and genuine respect for the rule of law" to avoid further inflaming the violence in the southern region of Mindanao.

"The EU believes strongly that the conflict in Mindanao can only be resolved through dialogue," it said in a statement.

Warsaw - Prime Minister Donald Tusk's bold plan for Poland to adopt the euro by 2011 has strong support among the business community and ordinary Poles, but others doubt that Warsaw can meet - or maintain - the strict economic criteria for joining the club.

Post-communist Eastern Europe's largest economy has in effect chosen high growth over low inflation and fiscal restraint. Poland's gross domestic product expanded 1.5 per cent in the second quarter compared to the previous three months, while the eurozone's GDP shrank by 0.2 per cent.