EU: The EU was yesterday unable to agree the terms for opening membership talks with Turkey, due to begin next Monday, and an emergency meeting of foreign ministers has been called for Sunday in an attempt to resolve the issue.
A meeting of EU ambassadors broke up in disagreement yesterday after Austria refused to abandon its hardline position on Turkey's membership bid.
The deadlock means that the EU's position remains uncertain three days before formal membership negotiations are due to open.
Facing down the 24 other member-states which are prepared to open talks on Monday, Vienna reiterated its demand that it be made clear that full membership of the EU is not necessarily the ultimate goal of the talks. Instead, it was indicated that a loose partnership with Turkey is an alternative outcome to the negotiations, which are expected to last at least 10 years.
Austria is calling for this to be stated in the negotiating mandate for Turkey, which sets out the pace and content of the EU's talks with Ankara.
Currently, the mandate states that the "shared objective of the negotiations is accession". Altering the text on the possible final outcome of negotiations with Ankara, however, would be extremely difficult, as it would mean going back on promises made by EU leaders last year.
While these are the issues Austria has been raising at EU meetings, many suspect that the real reason for Vienna digging its heels in so strongly lies elsewhere.
A staunch supporter of Croatia opening talks with the EU, Austrian diplomats have said repeatedly that they would find it very difficult to support talks starting with Turkey if Zagreb was left out in the cold.
Croatia was supposed to begin accession negotiations in March, but these were postponed because some member-states felt that Zagreb was not co-operating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
In an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel made the linkage between Turkey and Croatia explicit.
"If we trust Turkey to make further progress, we should trust Croatia too . . . It is in Europe's best interest to start negotiations with Croatia immediately," said the chancellor. "It is not fair to leave Croatia in an eternal waiting room."
This linkage will cause problems for a number of EU members if Brussels is perceived to be taking a softer line with Zagreb, particularly since other Balkan countries are queuing up to get into the EU.
A way out of the impasse over Croatia may be found today when the UN chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, meets Croatian authorities to assess that country's compliance with The Hague. Zagreb is reportedly confident that it can convince Mrs del Ponte of its co-operation in handing over fugitive war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina, meaning that she would have something positive to report to EU member-states over the weekend.
This could open the door to the EU sending a positive signal to Croatia, one diplomat said. That, in turn, could bring Austria back into line with the rest of the EU.
Britain, the current holder of the EU presidency, is working around the clock to ensure that talks do open with Turkey on time and a number of EU members reportedly believe that Austria will not actually take the drastic step of using its veto.
If talks do not to open with Ankara, the political fallout will be huge. Several sections of Turkey's population would be likely to see such a development as a confirmation that the EU wants to remain a Christian club.
"What do you gain by adding 99 per cent Muslim Turkey to the EU? You gain a bridge between the EU and the 1.5 billion-strong Islamic world. An alliance of civilisations will start", Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said recently.
Failure to proceed with the talks would be a blow to London, which has spent weeks fighting off criticism that its EU presidency is lacking leadership by saying that it has been devoting all its energies to the Turkey issue.