JOHN HUMPHRYS:                   Half way through the 
FOURTH day of a European summit that was supposed to end yesterday and 
still no agreement. It's never happened quite like this before. But, then, 
the stakes are high: governments have to agree to give up their vetoes 
on many important areas of policy if there's to be a new treaty and the 
smaller countries are being asked to surrender some of their voting power. 
It's particularly difficult for Tony Blair given that we're only a matter 
of months away from an election in which attitudes to European integration 
will play a big part.  The shadow defence secretary Ian Duncan Smith is 
with me but let's go first to Nice to find out what, if anything, is happening 
now.

                        And our Political Editor 
who's probably been up all night for days and days now, Andrew Marr is 
there looking remarkably fit on it.  Anything to report Andrew?

ANDREW MARR:                Yes well, what is going on 
is that the endless process as you say is grinding forward.  One minister 
told me we have spent three- hundred-and-thirty hours as ministers negotiating 
this.  Now another twenty-eight hours here and we're still not onto qualified 
majority voting, the thing that is of most importance of course to Britain 
and the Prime Minister back home.  What's happened here this morning is 
we're getting nearer to a resolution of the very, very difficult issue 
of how many votes each country gets in a new Europe, a wider European Union, 
and all the ancient enmities between different parts of Europe are suddenly 
re-emerging again. The Dutch and the Belgians and the Spanish and the Portugese 
all going at each other hammer and tongs.   It's been very very complicated, 
and the danger I think is that having been a treaty that was supposed to 
make decision-making in Europe quicker and easier and smoother in a wider 
Europe, we're actually going to get to a situation where it is much, much 
harder to take decisions.

HUMPHRYS:                    Assuming we get a treaty 
at all.  It looks at this rate as if we may not!

MARR:                    Well, it's possible.  They're 
now talking about maybe signing heads of agreement and then leaving it, 
the actual treaty to be signed later on.  That happened at Maastricht after 
all, it's not entirely unique, but there's a lot of anger behind the scenes 
about the way that the French have dealt with this.  They've - people are 
saying, really they have mucked this up pretty badly, it's been complicated 
but they should have been able to get through this much faster than they 
have.

HUMPHRYS:                    Are there any signs at 
the moment that the government is prepared, the British Government that 
is, is prepared to give ground on any of these areas.  They have these 
red line areas issues.  Is there any sign that they are going to give up 
the veto a bit more?

MARR:                    Not a flicker of a whiff 
of any sign of that at all.  They believe they would be slaughtered by 
the opposition at home and by the newspapers if they even thought of doing 
that, and there is a kind of  relatively relaxed mood inside the government 
camp.  They don't think they're going to be put under great pressure about 
that. Indeed, you see the Government being more and more aggressive on 
these European issues.  Not a half-day has passed since I've come here 
without the Prime Minister's Press spokesman going full barrel at the members 
of the media who he describes as being anti-European, no longer just Euro-sceptic. 
 The government has clearly decided to take on its critics including its 
critics in the media.

HUMPHRYS:                    Mightn't they try and 
slip the odd thing under the tent though, so that we don't notice until 
it's too late?

MARR:                    Well, we're all crawling 
over the different texts that are coming out.  One area that all of us 
I think are focussing on is the question of visas and asylum and immigration. 
 There are six areas where Britain has said absolutely red lined and we 
won't move.  Two of them are very well known, tax and social security. 
 Three of them are not contentious because nobody else wants to move on 
them either, and then that leaves this one of asylum and borders and so 
on.  And the government's got an opt-out that, they seem very relaxed about 
it, but that's certainly one area people will be concentrating on, and 
then there's the whole question of voting and the numbers of the commissioners. 
 Again, ministers are very, very relaxed at the moment, all the fire is 
concentrated elsewhere, but these negotiations are not over till they're 
over.  Very often there is an enormous row, a tantrum, a final gotterdammerung 
situation late at night when the food has run out and the drink has run 
out and everyone's tired. And of course you never know what's going to 
happen then.


HUMPHRYS:                    Andrew Marr, thanks very 
much indeed.