The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, London

Prime Minister Gordon Brown should halt ratification of a key European Union reform treaty and hold a referendum, newspapers said Saturday after Irish voters rejected the document in a vote. Britain is pushing ahead with ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, despite the resounding "no" vote from Ireland by 53 percent to 47, which plunged the EU into a fresh crisis as all 27 member states have to approve it.

The treaty, designed to streamline EU institutions after recent expansion eastwards but feared by much of the media here as an erosion of national sovereignty by stealth, is nearing the end of its course in parliament. But a number of Britain's mainly eurosceptic press urged Brown to put the treaty to a popular vote, arguing that he had reneged on a pledge made by his governing Labour Party at the last general election in 2005 to hold one.