20/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - The alleged "split" between commissioners Monti and Liikanen is totally without foundation, Commission Spokesman Jonathan Faull told the press on Thursday following a report in The Financial Times that there was serious dissension over competition on the broad band Internet market between the Commissioners responsible for competition and telecommunications respectively. Mr Faull stressed that the exchange of correspondence between Mr Monti and Mr Liikanen, to which the newspaper refers, dates back to November 2002 and is "part of a perfectly normal internal decision-making process" which resulted in the presentation last week by two Commissioners of the recommendation that covers eighteen markets in the telecommunications sector to be examined by national regulators before deciding how appropriate it is to continue applying them to a specific regulation (see EUROPE of 13 February, p.9). "There is no dispute, no conflict", Mr Faull concluded, describing the perception of The Financial Times as quite wrong.