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Major warned over

EU strong-arm

tactics

LONDON: Prime Minister John Major was warned on Wednesday he could lose his wafer-thin majority in parliament if he turned his campaign to overturn a ban on Britain's beef exports into a wider war against Europe.

The threat was issued by George Walden, a pro-European member of the ruling Conservative party, the day after three of Major's ministers stepped up Britain's "beef war" in Brussels by vetoing a total of 13 European Union decisions.

Writing in The Times, Walden said he was supporting Major's strong-arm tactics of non-cooperation with the EU through gritted teeth.

"But if Mr Major is goaded into widening the assault and extending non-cooperation, instead of hard negotiation, to the future of the Union then I reserve my position.

"Should the government lurch blindly forward against an adversary only dimly defined through the fog of nationalist rhetoric engulfing it, then, as our German friends say, ohne mich: without me," Walden wrote.

His article was the latest sign of a fight-back by pro-Europeans whose voice has been drowned out by the clamorous applause of "Eurosceptics" for Major's decision a week ago to get tough with the EU over its refusal to lift the beef ban.

The ban was imposed on March 27 because of evidence that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), had links to a deadly human brain disorder, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Walden's warning, which hardened comments he made at the weekend, is important because Major has an overall majority of just one in the 651-seat House of Commons.

Three Conservatives have already quit the parliamentary party in the past eight months in protest at what they see as the inexorable rise in power of Eurosceptics who are admantly opposed to closer ties with Europe.

Major has said he will continue to disrupt everyday EU business until Britain's partners end the ban on three beef by-products -- gelatine, tallow and semen -- and agree a framework that would lead to a lifting of the wider ban.-Reuter