Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, appeared tonight to have salvaged negotiations on Turkey's accession to the European Union after two days of bargaining and browbeating over Austria's opposition to Turkish membership.

The breakthrough came this afternoon when Vienna backed off from its demand that Turkey be granted at best a "privileged partner" status rather than full EU membership. Opening accession talks requires the unanimous approval of all 25 EU governments and Ursula Plassnik, the Austrian Foreign Minister, had questioned the EU's ability to absorb a Muslim nation of 70 million people.

In return - although the link was not formally confirmed - the EU agreed to reopen accession talks with Croatia, a key Austrian ally. Those talks were broken off in March for Zagreb's failure to hand over war crimes suspects.

This evening, however, Mr Straw and other EU foreign ministers were waiting to hear Turkey's formal response to the EU text. Although Ankara still has reservations about a single paragraph that would allow a divided Cyprus to join Nato, Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, was expected to fly to Luxembourg tonight for an already-delayed ceremony officially launching the talks.

The EU decision paves the way for negotiations which could allow Turkey - which has chasing membership of the European club for 40 years already - to join the EU as a full member by 2015. Britain has made the promotion of Turkish membership and the start of the talks a key priority of its six-month EU presidency.

The effect of today's political manouevres on the fabric of Europe will be played out over coming months and years and the mood in Luxembourg today was one of cautious relief.

Anthony Browne, Europe Correspondent for The Times, said that the day's chaotic round of talks still left many issues unresolved.

He said: "Austria has backed down and Croatia has been given the go-ahead to resume bits round of talks. Austria and Croatia have have very close ties dating back to the times of the Austro-Hungarian empire and this was one of the conditions which it had made.

"It has been a day of brinkmanship, rumour and scaremongering but it looks as though there has been a breakthrough."

Mr Straw said earlier today that although the negotiations with his Austrian counterpart, Ursula Plassnik, were "hard and difficult" they were moving forward.

"Yes, we are near [to a deal] but we are also on the edge of a precipice. If we go the right way we reach the sunny uplands. If we go the wrong way, it could be catastrophic for the European Union."

Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister, had raised the stakes this morning by telling members of his ruling AK party that he was not prepared to back down. Even so, he said that he would hold out "hope until the last minute".

Turkey’s moderate Islamist Government has made joining the EU its top political priority, and completed a feverish round of reforms — including giving more rights to its Kurdish minority and abolishing the death sentence — to meet the criteria for starting entry talks.

To join the EU, it would need to adopt about 80,000 pages of European legislation, which is expected to take a decade.

Failure to start negotiations would have been a devastating blow to the EU’s already damaged prestige. This year, the EU saw its proposed constitution collapse when Dutch and

French voters rejected it, while a spat between France and Britain over funding in June left it without a budget for 2007-2013.

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