President of the European Council Donald Tusk said the 'basic foundations' of an agreement were ready. — Reuters pic

WARSAW, Oct 16 — EU Council President Donald Tusk said today that the basic foundations of an agreement on Brexit were ready and that it could materialise within hours.

“The basic foundations of an agreement are ready and theoretically tomorrow we could accept this deal with Great Britain,” Tusk told Polish journalists in Brussels.

“Theoretically, in seven or eight hours everything should be clear,” Tusk said via a live broadcast on Poland’s TVN24 news channel.

A former Polish prime minister, Tusk made the remarks as British and European negotiators ploughed on with Brexit talks hoping that a deal can be found in time for this week’s European summit.

“I had hoped that we would have received a ready, negotiated, legal text this morning so that member states could get to know it,” Tusk said, adding that “everything is going in a good direction.”

Britain’s Brexit minister Steve Barclay described the ongoing closed-door talks as “intensive” but confirmed his country would ask for another Brexit extension if there was no deal by Saturday.

Tusk underscored there was “a great deal of turmoil” on the British side.

“But as you must have noticed, with Brexit and with our British partners everything is possible.”

“Yesterday evening I was ready to bet that it’s (the deal) all set and agreed, today there are certain doubts on the British side,” he said.

“We’ll see, I’m still hopeful.” — AFP