French to hold on to tickets

 BRUSSELS (AP) -- French fans already promised World Cup tickets could rejoice today. Many other soccer diehards could only gnash their teeth.
 The European Union said today it will not seek a redistribution of World Cup tickets already allocated, making sure instead that the limited amount of seats still available will get a more equitable and international spread.
 Even though the Executive Commission of the 15-country EU maintained that the largest share of World Cup tickets had already been sold through a system unfairly favoring the French, it said it would not spent energy on a lost cause.
 "To recover (tickets) we would have to run after a million French," said EU Commission spokesman Stefan Rating. France hosts the championship from June 10 to July 12.
 Instead, the Commission said, it has been "discussing solutions to assure that all tickets still available to the "grand public" will be distributed on equal conditions to all supporters."
 The Commission said it held "constructive talks" with the World Cup organizing committee late Thursday and stressed it was "confident" the committee will come up with a fair system for the remaining tickets by the time both sides reconvene in Brussels next week.
 Overall, 2.5 million tickets went on sale for the 64 matches. A minority of tickets remained on sale, although it remained unclear how large it was.
 Canadians have ordered 6,050 tickets and should find out later this month how many they will get.
 Under the current conditions 65 per cent of tickets are to be sold in France while only 20 per cent at most are reserved for the qualifying countries.
 England, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium all have been very vocal in their demand for more tickets. Some of the federations have up to 10 times the requests for tickets as there are seats available.
 But Rating said the national soccer federations should have complained a lot earlier about ticket allocation if they wanted the Commission to act. Any Commission investigation on alleged abuses of a dominant position is lengthy, and with three months to go before the opening kickoff, not enough time was left, he said.