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Austria asks EU for return to normal ties

BRUSSELS: Austria asked its European Union partners on Monday for a return to normal relations at the start of the first formal EU meeting since Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party joined Austria's coalition government.

"Austrians are European patriots who need the European Union. But the European Union needs Austria too. This is the constructive spirit I am going to work with," Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters as she arrived for two days of talks.

The Austrian crisis threatened to sour the launch of a year-long debate on reforms to prepare the EU for enlargement.

An Austrian spokesman, however, told Reuters that it was "business as usual" and Ferrero-Waldner, a member of the conservative People's Party and well known to her EU colleagues, was received in a "perfectly normal atmosphere".

In Austria, a Freedom Party official said on Monday Haider had cancelled a planned visit to Brussels to attend a meeting of the EU's Committee of the Regions on Wednesday and Thursday.

France and Belgium snubbed a minister from Haider's party at an informal EU meeting in Portugal last week.

Ferrero-Waldner will put Vienna's case to its EU partners over an informal lunch later, with Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, replying on behalf of the 14 other member states.

"We'll be looking very carefully at what she has to say to us," British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said.

"What we want to hear from her is that all members of the Austrian government, including Haider's party, are committed to the declaration on human rights that they made last week.-Reuters