Leading articles: Accession talks must go ahead

It didn't rate a mention in his speech to the Labour Party conference, although it did produce an impassioned plea from his Foreign Secretary in Brighton. But Turkey's application for membership of the European Union is likely to be the first major test of Tony Blair's presidency of the EU. And a crucial challenge to his and Jack Straw's powers of persuasion.

The UK has always been strongly in favour of accession talks with Turkey, and rightly so. If the Union is to keep expanding to its geographic and historic shape, if it is to act as a catalyst for democratic change in the surrounding regions, and if it is to prove a means of bringing Islam into cohabitation with the Christian West, then there could be no better candidate for inclusion than Turkey. It straddles the straits between East and West, it has a strong secular and pro-Western tradition dating from the time of Kemal Ataturk, it has been a stalwart member of Nato alongside the Western European countries, and it has made a clear policy decision and started on the steps necessary to join the Union.

A year ago the road seemed fairly straight and even. The Commission was in favour, most of the member states had expressed approval and, with a final meeting of the EU foreign ministers next Monday, a start to negotiations (expected to last 10 years, it should be added) would be under way.

All that has now been jeopardised by growing dissension in the European Parliament, the open opposition of Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and now the Austrian refusal to go along with a vote in favour at the meeting of permanent representatives of the member states this week. An emergency meeting of foreign ministers has been called in Luxembourg on Sunday in a last-ditch effort to save the talks.

Agreement will be far from easy. Quite aside from the thorny issues of Turkish responsibility for the Armenian massacres and its refusal to recognise Cyprus, there is Austria's last-minute demand that Turkey be offered partnership rather than full membership - a suggestion which Turkey indignantly and understandably refuses as changing the rules of the game at the last moment.

The real worry is that time is slipping away from these talks. Opposition to Turkish membership is building in the Union, while nationalist antagonism to Europe's prevarications and changes of mind is rising in Turkey. If negotiations are to proceed, then the timetable has to be kept. If ever there was a time for Tony Blair to exercise his undoubted skills of charm and persuasion, it is now. Otherwise an historic opportunity may be lost, with incalculable effect on future relations with the Muslim world.

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