EU ministers challenge Britain's victory claim on huge bill

Britain declared victory after the EU agreed Friday to extend a deadline for a huge 2.1-billion-euro bill, but walked straight into a new row as other countries rejected its claims to have reduced the amount. Prime Minister David Cameron had refused to pay the top-up, warning that it could push Britain towards the EU exit in a referendum that he has promised to hold in 2017, so long as he wins in a general election next May.
After tense talks in Brussels, finance minister George Osborne said the bill had been "halved", and that instead of a December 1 cut-off, Britain would now pay the rest in two instalments before September 2015. But other European ministers insisted Britain would still have to pay the full sum, while Cameron's eurosceptic political opponents accused him of using "smoke and mirrors" to hide the truth. "Instead of footing the bill, we have halved the bill, we have delayed the bill, we will pay no interest on the bill," Osborne told reporters.