01/08/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, British Conservatives criticised the draft “amending treaty” proposed by the Portuguese presidency (the text is available at http://www.eu2007.pt ) - which they reject as being a “copy of the former European Constitution”. They also restated their request to organise a referendum in the United Kingdom on this text. “Now that the first official text in English on the new European treaty has appeared, we can clearly see that this is a copy of the former European Constitution”, said William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the Tories. He said that whole sections have just been recopied and that practically everything that was in the former European Constitution is in the new treaty. The European president, the minister for foreign affairs - they are there, albeit under different names, he said, adding that it also contains the discarding of veto and major powers for the European Union in justice. Mr Hague announced that the Conservatives would be studying the draft treaty “phrase by phrase” over coming weeks, in order to expose how it plans to transfer the powers of Great Britain to the EU. (hb)