TAKING THE LONG VIEW

by MONITOR
BRITAIN'S Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has to be extremely dexterous in defending the government's position on Iraq. However there are two other issues also affecting the Middle East on which he prefers to play a very straight bat. The first is Iran's uncompromising position over its nuclear programme on which he continues to insist that the use of force to resolve the issue would be “unthinkable”. The second is his resolute stand on the need for the European Union to open negotiations with Turkey about its membership of the EU in the near future. With Britain holding the presidency of the EU at the moment his attitude is of great importance and yesterday he had to call an emergency meeting of his fellow EU foreign minsters in Luxembourg on Sunday ahead of the scheduled opening of negotiations with Turkey on Monday. The need for the emergency meeting arose because of the refusal of Austria at a preliminary meeting to agree that the negotiations should go ahead; the vote was 24–1 with Austria insisting that the most Turkey should be offered is an economic “partnership” rather than full membership. On Sunday Mr Straw will be looking to persuade Austria that it should be more flexible at this early stage but one of the reasons for Austrian opposition may be an impending election there and the recognition of its ruling party that full membership for Turkey would be unpopular with the voters.
The 24-1 vote is interesting in itself since several other countries have reservations about Turkish membership but are probably content to suppress them until later during the negotiations which are expected to last ten years. Turkey has said more than once that it would withdraw from discussion if anything less than full membership is on the table. Mr Straw is strongly in favour of Turkey's position. He said this week that “the way in which the EU handles the Turkish membership application will be a factor in determining the geo-political landscape in the Middle East for a long time to come.”