LUXEMBOURG — The European Union largely abandoned hope of clinching a Brexit deal this month and a top EU official implored British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday to come up with “a new method of thinking” on the Irish border issue that has stumped negotiators for over a year.

With the leaders of EU countries meeting Wednesday, EU Council President Donald Tusk told May to think like a free spirit and “present something creative enough to solve this impasse” at the summit that previously was touted as a pivotal event in Britain’s two-year departure from the bloc.

As prospects for a compromise stood ahead of the meeting, Tusk said there were “no grounds for optimism” about Britain and the EU reaching a deal.

Members of May’s own party and the Conservatives’ parliamentary allies oppose the prime minister’s current proposals for the future EU-U.K. border in Ireland, putting her in a political straitjacket that restricts the “creative” ideas Tusk seeks.

“We sometimes feel the British are negotiating with the British,” Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said, illustrating the EU’s frustration.

A breakthrough on how to keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland as porous as possible appeared close enough Sunday that EU officials thought Wednesday’s summit would be a celebration of the elusive Brexit deal.

But continued disagreement on the border issue sent both sides in the negotiations in search of revised positions. The EU said the process was expected to take a few more weeks, pushing the timeline for a deal into November at the earliest.

Negotiators are working toward coming to an agreement “in the coming weeks” to ensure Britain leaves the EU as scheduled on March 29 in an orderly fashion, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said.

“We are not there yet,” he said. “We will use that time – calmly, with serious intent – to find the overall deal.”

Speaking on the eve of the summit in Luxembourg, Barnier said many terms of the divorce have been agreed upon already, such as how much money Britain owes the EU.

But aspects of the withdrawing member’s future relationship with the EU are unresolved, Barnier said, most notably the border that will separate EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

May has rejected the bloc’s proposal for avoiding a hard border, which would keep Northern Ireland inside a customs union with the EU even if the rest of the U.K. leaves. She says that is unacceptable because it would impose new controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Instead, she has proposed keeping all of the U.K. in a customs union with the bloc – but only temporarily, until new trade arrangements are in place that alleviate the need for border controls.

Britain insists such a solution cannot be permanent, while the EU says just as strongly that it must not have an end date.

To illustrate the perceived intractability of the Irish border problem, Tusk on Tuesday compared it to the mythical Gordian knot that cannot be untied because it is so complicated. The ancient Greek warrior king Alexander the Great used his sword to slash through the knot when all else failed, according to the legend.

“Unfortunately, I can’t see a new version of Alexander the Great,” Tusk said.

Asked whether he was referring to former British foreign secretary and Brexit champion Boris Johnson – whose given first name is Alexander – Tusk said: “To compare Boris Johnson to Alexander the Great is an exaggeration, I think.”

Since the Brexit discussions began over 18 months ago, the October summit was earmarked as the most likely date for an agreement given the need for parliamentary approvals before Britain officially departs in March.

The EU said it was pressing forward with contingency plans to protect the 27 remaining member states if Britain crashes out of the bloc with neither a deal in place nor a transition period established. Tusk warned that chances of Britain leaving without a deal were higher than ever before.

In London, May urged her divided Cabinet to back her amid growing talk that several members were ready to resign in protest of her government’s proposals to the EU.

During a three-hour Cabinet meeting Tuesday, May said the government must “stand together and stand firm.”

The EU is waiting for new proposals from Britain. But May’s room for compromise is restricted by divisions within her Conservative Party, and by her reliance on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which opposes any compromise on the border.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said after several ministers met privately over pizza on Monday night that “no one is planning on resigning. We are all doing our jobs and we are trying to get the best deal for this country, and that’s it.”

Germany exhorted May to come to Wednesday’s summit with a positive message that could kick-start the stalled talks.

“Take responsibility and be constructive,” said Germany’s Europe Minister Michael Roth when he arrived for talks with Barnier in Luxembourg.

Story: Raf Casert, Jill Lawless

LONDON — Ecuador has formally ordered Julian Assange to steer clear of topics that could harm its diplomatic interests if he wants to be reconnected to the internet, according to a local media outlet Monday.

The nine-page memo published by Ecuadorean website Codigo Vidrio said Assange is prohibited from “interfering in the internal affairs of other states” or from activities “that could prejudice Ecuador’s good relations with other states.”

There was no indication Assange signed onto the memo, which governs the WikiLeaks founder’s access to the Wi-Fi network of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he lived since seeking asylum there in 2012.

The Associated Press could not immediately authenticate the document. But Codigo Vidrio has a track record of publishing inside material from the London embassy, and the restrictions detailed in the memo echo the conditions Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno recently described.

Messages left with Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry and WikiLeaks representatives were not immediately returned.

Tension has been long building between Assange and his hosts, particularly after the Australian ex-hacker began cheering on Catalonian secessionists in Spain last year. In March, Ecuador announced it was restricting Assange’s access to the internet.

On Sunday, WikiLeaks said Assange would be reconnected to the internet, but it’s not clear whether the move was contingent on him agreeing to Ecuador’s conditions.

Ecuador rolls back @JulianAssange isolation after UN meets with president

Background: https://t.co/Mb6gXlz7QShttps://t.co/0UBIVYyKll pic.twitter.com/poFi6nBU4N

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 14, 2018

The memo mostly governs security and communication issues, but offers hints of other Assange issues at the embassy.

For example, the document ordered Assange to keep the bathroom clean and warned that his pet cat would be confiscated and taken to an animal shelter if he did not look after it.

Assange took refuge at Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced sex crimes allegations.

Story: Raphael Satter

HELENA, Montana — The first-ever child pornography suspect named to the FBI’s Most Wanted list cashed out his life savings and was fleeing law enforcement on a bus traveling across Montana last year when another passenger noticed child pornography on his laptop screen.

When the bus pulled into Billings, the passenger confronted Eric Franklin Rosser – a former keyboardist for John Mellencamp – who had USD$20,000 taped to his legs, another $50,000 in his bag and $1,000 worth of marijuana, according to court records.

“Leave me alone. I know I have a problem,” Rosser responded, according to the court files.

That July 2017 encounter led to Rosser’s arrest and his guilty plea earlier this month in U.S. District Court on a charge of accessing the internet with the intent to view child pornography. He faces a mandatory 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in January.

A previous child pornography conviction with ties to Thailand and Indiana could lead to a sentence of up to 20 years.

Bryan C. Tipp, Rosser’s attorney in Missoula, did not return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment. Prosecutors declined to comment.

Rosser, 66, has keyboard credits on two of Mellencamp’s albums, “Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did” in 1980 and “American Fool” in 1982.

An investigation into a child pornography ring in Indiana in the late 1990s led to Rosser’s arrest in Thailand in 2000 on charges of lewd behavior and possession of pornographic materials.

At the time, Rosser was living in Bangkok, where he played piano at an upscale hotel and ran a music school from his home, giving lessons to children from prominent families.

The FBI said Rosser had produced a videotape of him sexually assaulting a pre-teen girl in Thailand.

“He provided a videotape of that to a man in Indiana in exchange for that man’s homemade child pornography,” said Steve DeBrota, who prosecuted the Indiana case and held it up as a great example of local, state, federal and international law enforcement cooperation.

“This was hand-to-hand exchange of materials between people,” said Brad Swain, who helped investigate the case and is now sheriff of Monroe County, Indiana.

Shortly after his arrest, Rosser sent an email to newspapers in Bangkok admitting he was a pedophile and asserting there were “only four tapes containing sex acts with immature girls” which he made so he could re-live the experiences and not create more victims.

“Rosser was famous for understating what he actually did,” DeBrota said. “But we have a very exact lens on how bad he was.”

Rosser disappeared after posting bail, kicking off a worldwide manhunt and becoming the first child pornography suspect placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

“I still have the (FBI) poster in my office,” DeBrota said.

Rosser underwent plastic surgery and liposuction and used assumed names and fake passports to travel to Europe, Spain and France before taking a cruise ship back to Thailand, DeBrota said.

A tip led to Rosser’s arrest in Thailand in 2001, and he was extradited to the U.S. the next year. The former Bloomington, Indiana, resident pleaded guilty in 2003 to child pornography and international conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison, which was the longest sentence available at the time, DeBrota said.

“He was responsible for transferring child pornography produced in Indiana to another person who then digitized it and put it on the internet,” victimizing several children, DeBrota said.

Rosser moved to the Yakima, Washington, area after his release from prison in January 2017, and he was to be under supervised release for three years.

Five months later, Rosser’s probation officer petitioned for his arrest for violating the terms of his release. The motion said Rosser acknowledged viewing online videos of “Japanese girls who were younger than 18, young Russian girls doing gymnastics, that sort of thing.”

Rosser told Montana officers that he emptied his bank accounts, wrote letters to his family and fled to avoid returning to prison.

In November, a federal judge in Washington sentenced him to two years in prison for violating his supervised release.

Story: Amy Beth Hanson