ESSEN, Germany -- European Union leaders took the first major steps toward bringing six former communist East European states into the Union on Friday.


The leaders, meeting for a summit in the German city of Essen, agreed on a plan to prepare Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria for membership.


It offers trade concessions, regular political talks among ministers and leaders and studies on harmonizing East European legislation with the EU's single market and competition rules, and on the impact on EU agricultural policies.


"The central message must be that the European Union is moving forward," officials quoted German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the summit's host and chairman, as saying.


Leaders of all six East European countries will meet their EU counterparts at the end of the summit on Saturday.


Summit host and chairman German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was also trying to head off a row with Spain, which has refused to ratify EU membership for Austria, Finland and Sweden without confirmation of greater access to EU waters for Spanish fishermen.


He was having a private meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who wants the summit to give a strong signal to fisheries ministers to resolve the impasse.


But much of the summit was overshadowed by the failure to stop war in Bosnia, and leaders heard warnings that pulling out peacekeeping troops could lead to a massacre.


EU president Germany said it would push the summit for the kind of statement that eluded the 53-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which met earlier this week.


The CSCE meeting, in Budapest, broke up without agreeing any joint position on the war in Yugoslavia.


"The presidency considers it quite necessary that this European summit in Essen make a clear statement about the situation in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia, not least because of the (CSCE)," Joachim Bitterlich, Kohl's main foreign affairs adviser, said.


Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark want the summit to restate strongly a commitment to keep troops in the region. Officials from France and Britain, who are the biggest contributors to the peacekeeping and humanitarian effort, played down talk of withdrawal, stressing it was a contingency plan to be used in a situation they hope will not arise.


A senior British official said a pullout was the last option ,and virtually all countries now agreed it would simply "ring-fence a massacre."


In Zagreb, Joachim von Stuelpnagel, the German head of the EU monitoring mission, told reporters that monitors would stay on in Bosnia even if the UN peacekeepers were forced to leave.


During the summit's opening session, European Commission President Jacques Delors said economic growth alone would not be enough to put the bloc's 17 million jobless back to work, stressing the key job-creating role of small firms, research, new technology and infrastructure networks.


After 10 years in office, it was Delors' final summit as president of the EU executive. The summit is also a last hurrah on the European level for a number of the leaders. Ailing French President Francois Mitterrand is retiring next year, while Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds remains in his post only until a new government is formed.