Rifkind will push for EU veto to stay

ANDREW MARSHALL

Malcolm Rifkind, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, will today unveil details of how Britain wants Europe to deal with the rest of the world, giving the first indications of the stance that Britain will take when the EU rewrites the Maastricht treaty.

Speaking to the French International Relations Institute, IFRI, in Paris, Mr Rifkind will make what the Foreign Office is billing as a major foreign- policy speech. He will lay out Britain's approach to the Common Foreign and Security Policy, an initiative introduced in the Maastricht treaty whereby the EU tries to co-ordinate and combine the foreign policies of member states.

The 15 EU states will meet in Turin later this month to begin the Inter- Governmental Conference, a series of meetings that will rewrite the Maastricht treaty. The Government is preparing a White Paper on its own approach, to be published next week. Mr Rifkind's speech will spell out some of its contents, and underline Britain's general approach that foreign policy should remain a matter for individual sovereign states, and that states should retain their veto. As so often with European policy matters, rhetoric is likely to be directed at efforts by federalist EU nations and the European Commission to force the pace towards a European government. Mr Rifkind will stress that there is no case for shifting power to Brussels from foreign ministries in national capitals. But he is likely to concede that there will be moves towards a European foreign policy.

The Foreign Secretary is making the speech in Paris partly because France shares some of Britain's reservations over the federalist impulses of its European partners. While in Paris, Mr Rifkind will see - as well as the Prime Minister, Alain Juppe - Philippe Seguin, the Speaker of the French National Assembly. Mr Seguin, who led France's anti-Maastricht campaign during the 1992 referendum, will doubtless lendsupport to Britain's scepticism.

The central issue that Mr Rifkind will have to deal with is what the French and Germans call "constructive abstention" - giving individual states the right to object to a policy move, but not the ability to block it. France and Germany believe that it is essential to have a mechanism of this type so that the EU can forge ahead even if Britain or other states want to stand aside.