LUXEMBOURG, Oct. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- European Union (EU) foreign ministers on Monday night reached agreement on the opening of accession talks with Turkey, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.

    "I'm very pleased to announce that agreement has now been reached that negotiations on Turkey's accession into the European Union can and will begin in the very near future," hopefully before midnight, Straw told a press conference.

    Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gulis on his way to Luxembourg for the formal beginning of the talks, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told the same press conference.

    Straw, whose country holds the EU presidency, hailed the day as a historic day for Europe and for the international community.

    "Now more than 40 years since the prospect of membership of the European Union was first held out to Turkey," said Straw.

    Straw said every enlargement of the EU resulted in stronger existing members and the new member(s), expressing his confidence that this time, the same thing will happen again.

    "I have absolutely no doubt that these benefits will follow from this enlargement and will bring a strong secular state, which happens to have Muslim majority, into the EU, and prove that we can live, work and prosper together, and we are all much stronger for being united than being divided," he said.

    He said bringing Turkey into the EU is a prize worth striving for, but admitted that the talks will have a long road ahead.

    Olli Rehn, EU commissioner for enlargement, echoed Straw. "Indeed it's a prize worth striving for, because Europe needs a stable, democratic and increasingly prosperous Turkey. And the start of negotiations is the best way to advance these objectives," he told the same press conference.

    He said the start of talks will encourage those political forces in Turkey which strive for reforms, human rights and the rule of law, and give leverage to the EU to influence the direction of the reforms.

    The agreement was reached after 30 hours of negotiations among EU foreign ministers. Straw and 23 of his colleagues had to persuade Ursula Plassnik, the foreign minister of Austria, to drop Vienna's demand that Turkey should be granted a "privileged partnership" instead of full membership, should entry talks fail at the end.

    Turkey had been unequivocal on its stand that such an option was totally unacceptable. Gul chose to wait in Ankara for news from Luxembourg until the last minute.

    Plassnik told reporters after the agreement was reached that her country's insistence actually helped the EU to be more considerate on the Turkey issue.

    "For all of us, the absorption capacity has been formulated in a much more concrete and practical way; the condition for membership now is something that has not been achieved before," she said.

    "We have also, for the first time, been discussing and thinking what would happen and what the situation would be, in case full membership would not materialize."

    Austria finally accepted the clause without mentioning the term "membership" in the negotiating framework, which sets ground rules and procedures for the negotiations.

    The clause now reads: "The shared objective of the negotiations is accession. There negotiations are an open-ended process, the outcome of which cannot be guaranteed beforehand."

    But Turkey was promised that it will be "fully anchored in the European structures through the strongest possible bond" if Turkey is not in a position to assume in full all the obligations of membership.

    Ankara first asked to join the EU in 1963. The EU said yes in 1999 and at a summit in December 2004, EU leaders decided to launch membership negotiations with Turkey this Monday.

    Under EU's rules, Turkey's entry needs the nod from all 25 EU member states. Austria's insistence on a "privileged partnership" therefore becomes the last hurdle.

    Turkey signed a protocol in July to extend its customs union agreement to the 10 new EU member states, including Cyprus, satisfying the conditions for the start of membership talks.

    However, Ankara said at the same time that the signing of the protocol did not mean any form of political recognition of Cyprus. The statement runs against EU rules that a new member state must recognize all its existing members.

    Ankara refuses to recognize the Greek-Cypriot government in the south, which represents the whole Republic of Cyprus in the EU, and wants independence of the Turkish-Cypriot north.

    The EU governments issued a compromise counterstatement last month, allowing Turkey to recognize Cyprus before it formally joins the EU, thus saving the process from derailment.

    The talks are expected to last at least 10 years. Enditem