John Simpson, BBC
For the time being then everything is in a state of suspension here. The agriculture ministers of the ten meet tomorrow without being able to fix the new level of farm prices and the foreign ministers meet on Saturday to deal with the budget problem in a way that the French President now says is unacceptable.
It's a little like the budget crisis of 1980, when Mrs Thatcher negotiated a three year programme of rebates from the EEC budget. But this time Mrs Thatcher's whole approach is quieter and much less combative, as she showed, when I asked her if she'd been angry when President Mitterrand turned down the compromise.
MT
Um, no, I was determined to be quite calm about it, perfectly calm. Uh, if this one doesn't work, we have to find another solution. It's in his interest and in ours that we should both find a solution. All of the Community wants a solution, and also of course, it's coming up to the time when we need a decision on agricultural prices and on exactly a number of things that are outstanding on the Common Agricultural Policy. I'm not asking for an unfair result. Britain never does. She asks for a fair result. That can yield a fair result for Britain and therefore, I believe, a fair result for the other partners. Now, it may be someone will come up with another plan, but we know this one and we're used, now, to working with it, and I think it's just a pity that anyone should say ‘no’ to that, but I haven't anything else to put in its place.