INTERVIEW-US seeks country-by-country visa deals with EU states

                                
 By Kerstin Gehmlich
                                
 BERLIN, March 11 (Reuters) - The United States will press
ahead with negotiations on visa-free deals with newer EU member
states, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on
Tuesday, despite the bloc's opposition to such bilateral deals.
                                
 The European Union has urged Washington to stop playing
divide-and-rule and allow citizens of all new EU member states
to travel to the United States visa-free.
                                
 "We have to admit country by country," Chertoff told Reuters
in an interview in Berlin. 
                                
 "If we waited until every EU country qualified, it would
delay new entrants for a long time. I think most of the new
entrants would rather get in sooner than later," he said.
                                
 Most EU states are part of the U.S. visa waiver programme,
which allows people to travel without visas. But 11 out of the
12 mostly ex-communist countries that joined the bloc in 2004
and 2007, along with older member Greece, are not. 
                                
 Chertoff is to hold talks with EU Justice and Security
Commissioner Franco Frattini and other senior EU officials on
the issue on Thursday in Slovenia.
                                
 "What I'm happy to say is that we're for the first time
going to be in a position to begin admitting several countries
as early as later this year, assuming that we meet all the
milestones," Chertoff said.
                                
 Frattini said on Tuesday he hoped talks with the United
States could move fast enough to allow for political endorsement
of a visa waiver programme for all 27 EU states at an EU-U.S.
summit in June and its implementation by the end of 2008. 
                                
 But Frattini's attempts to keep the negotiations as the
exclusive competence of Brussels have been undermined by new
members of the bloc agreeing to do bilateral deals. 
                                
 The Czech Republic angered the European Commission when it
signed a deal last week to make it easier for Czechs to travel
to the United States visa-free in exchange for enhanced air
security cooperation. 
                                
 Estonia's president said on Tuesday his country would ignore
protests from the European Commission and sign a bilateral visa
and air security deal with the United States, and fellow Baltic
state Latvia is also due to sign an agreement.
                                
 Chertoff is due to sign these visa and air security deals
with Estonia and Latvia on Wednesday.
                                
 "This is something a number of countries have really been
asking for for the last couple of years," Chertoff said.
                                
 "So this is a real opportunity for countries -- Eastern
European countries and other countries -- to participate in the
programme. And I am hopeful that we can get everybody on board
to streamline this entry process as readily as possible."
 (Reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich; editing by Keith Weir)