European Community Still Divided Over Stubborn National Rivalries : Union: Summit did produce compromise allowing for possible military support for Bosnia relief efforts.

Six months after European Community leaders signed a historic treaty for political and economic union, their two-day summit that ended here Saturday exposed all the stubborn national rivalries that still divide Western Europe.

The list of issues on which the 12 EC leaders could not agree was long and deep: the Community’s next budget, the timetable for admitting new members, the countries that will serve as home to a host of new EC agencies.

On the thorniest international crisis facing the Community--the state of war in what used to be Yugoslavia--the EC leaders stitched together a compromise allowing for possible military support of emergency relief efforts for besieged Bosnia-Herzegovina. For a full year, however, the EC has found itself powerless to stop the carnage on its southeastern flank.

And the leaders got nowhere on the most intractable internal issue hovering over their summit: what to do about Danish voters’ refusal to ratify the treaty on European economic and political union that the EC leaders negotiated last December in the Dutch town of Maastricht.

As before, the leaders vowed to press ahead for ratification of the Maastricht treaty by the other 11 EC countries. But under EC rules, treaties become effective only after ratification by all 12.

If the other 11 members ratify, Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter said he would try to find some way to put the issue before the Danish people again. But polls in Denmark show the treaty would lose by a bigger margin on a second vote than it did on the first, and the EC leaders came up with no strategy if Denmark continued to say no.

The EC leaders did take a few concrete steps during their two days here. For one, they reappointed Jacques Delors to another two years as president of the EC’s policy-formulating commission.

On other matters, they:

* Urged South Africa to allow foreign observers to participate in its investigation of the recent massacre of 39 blacks at the township of Boipatong.

* Called on Israeli Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin, whose party won last Tuesday’s election, to “seize the opportunity to negotiate a comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.

* Promised that its members would implement the measures approved by the recent worldwide environmental summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

It was the EC’s own budget that took more of the leaders’ time than any other issue. The EC’s four poorest countries--Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece--pressed for a doubling over the next five years of EC funds set aside for development projects there. The richer countries, with Britain the most vociferous, refused.

The final communique from the summit promised only an “appropriate” increase in aid for the poor countries. Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, for one, called that language inadequate.

To accommodate additional aid for the poor countries, Delors, the EC commission’s president, had earlier this year proposed a 30% increase (after inflation) in the Community budget over the next five years. When Britain and other nations objected, he suggested spreading the increase over seven years. The EC leaders rejected that formula as well and promised merely to resolve the budget impasse at their next summit in December.

The EC leaders also failed to break their stalemate over where to locate the headquarters of a variety of new agencies they have agreed to establish.

Britain refused to abandon London as the site of the European Central Bank, which is to manage Europe’s monetary policy after many EC nations adopt a common currency later this decade. Most other nations supported the claim of Germany, whose deutschemark is Europe’s bedrock currency, to be home to the new agency.

The dispute over the bank prevented the leaders from even addressing the rest of a package presented by Portuguese Prime Minister Anibal Cavaco Silva, the summit’s host. Cavaco Silva included something for everybody: the bank for Germany, a new drug agency for Britain, an environmental agency for Spain and a plant-life study agency for Greece.

“Britain found it was not ready to take a decision,” grumbled Portuguese Foreign Minister Joao de Deus Pinheiro. “It was a ridiculous argument.”

On the sensitive issue of admitting new members into the Community, the summit adopted a compromise that different leaders interpreted differently. The final communique said “official” negotiations with the four Nordic and Alpine applicants (Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland) would have to await ratification of the Maastricht treaty.

British Prime Minister John Major considered that a mandate to begin informal talks at the end of this year or early next year. Britain hopes that enlarging the EC will complicate efforts of some other EC nations to deepen the economic and political ties among Community members.

Portugal’s Cavaco Silva, by contrast, said it was “implicit” in the communique that talks could not begin if today’s 12 EC nations had not ratified the Maastricht treaty. Many EC nations, including Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, fear Britain’s strategy of widening the Community as a way of preventing a deeper union.

As has become customary at EC summits, the leaders pledged to work toward completion of talks to liberalize international trade “as soon as possible.” They rejected draft language setting a year-end target.

The trade talks, in their sixth year, are all but moribund, deadlocked over a U.S. demand that the EC dismantle its program of farm subsidies. A senior British official said the repeated commitment by world leaders to complete the negotiations was becoming “embarrassing.”