Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik told reporters on arriving in Luxembourg that she hoped there would be movement, adding: "We shall work together in a European spirit."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who had separate talks with Plassnik and with the Cypriot foreign minister before he was to chair a dinner of all 25 ministers, said he did not want to contemplate the possibility of an Austrian veto.

"Clearly that would represent a failure for the EU," he told reporters. "This is a crucial meeting for the future of the European Union."

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told Straw on Saturday that he would not fly to Luxembourg until he had seen the negotiating mandate approved unanimously by the EU.

"TO THE LIMITS"

EU diplomats were hoping Austria would drop its opposition once voting ended in regional elections in Styria province, where exit polls showed Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's People's Party would lose power despite his tough stance on Turkey.

Schuessel has informally linked the Turkish issue to a demand that the EU open accession talks immediately with Austria's Roman Catholic neighbour, Croatia.

Those talks have been frozen until Zagreb satisfies a U.N. war crimes prosecutor that it is cooperating fully in the hunt for a fugitive, indicted ex-general.

It was not clear whether the regional defeat would affect the Austrian position, but right-wing Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach, criticised German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for suggesting Austria was isolated in its stance.

"It is unbelievable how presumptuous an almost-resigned minister of a deselected government can be towards Austria with the words 'you are all alone' when everybody knows that the large majority of the European people sees Turkey in a privileged partnership and not as a full member," APA news agency quoted Gorbach as saying.

In an effort to secure a deal, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan talked by telephone with Schuessel on Saturday, telling journalists in Ankara afterwards he was confident Austria would not "go to the limits".

Erdogan said on Sunday Turkey would go ahead with its political, legal and economic reforms even if there was no decision at Sunday's EU meeting. He said he believed the bloc would "make the most correct decision based on common sense".

"But no future goals of our nation have been indexed to a certain date or to October 3," he told a party meeting, referring to the date on which EU leaders unanimously decided to start entry talks with Turkey.

A prolonged EU wrangle would deepen the mood of mutual disenchantment at the launch of what is undoubtedly the EU's most ambitious accession process.

Turkey, a NATO ally strategically located on the hinge of Europe and the Middle East, has been seeking to join the wealthy European bloc since 1963, when it signed a first association agreement with Brussels.

Straw said the Europeans had always seen Turkey as part of Europe in the past.

"When Western Europe needed defence, along with the United States it looked to Turkey for defence of its eastern flank against the then Soviet Union, and no issues were then raised about the fact that Turkey had an Islamic majority," he said.

Britain sought to separate the Turkey and Croatia issues by scheduling the conclusion of the negotiating mandate with Turkey for Sunday evening and holding back a review meeting on Croatia with chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte until Monday morning.

Austria is seeking to delete a key clause that says "the shared objective of the negotiations is accession" and replace it with wording making clear Turkey would be offered a lesser relationship if the Union felt unable to absorb it fully.

Ankara has made clear it would walk away rather than accept such a second-class status.