Major Defends European Policy

Prime Minister John Major yesterday defended his "wait-and-see" European policy, telling his last party conference before an election that it was essential to maintain Britain's voice in Europe.

But in a relaxed question and answers session, Major said that unless a European single currency was carefully crafted following strict economic criteria, it could collapse with catastrophic effects for the whole of Europe.

"This is an issue that if it were to go wrong would crack wide open the European Union," Major told delegates as he stood jacketless on the platform fielding impromptu questions.

"If it cracked it would impact on this country as well... so we need to have our voice."

Major is battling to cut the opposition Labour party's huge poll lead with only seven months to go before an election.

But his efforts have been hampered by a new sleaze scandal involving a former government minister as well as bitter infighting over Europe in the party, in government since 1979.

Major's informal question-and-answer session was designed to win over voters by showing the "man of the people" side of the prime minister - often derided as a grey and uninspiring politician.

Regaling party members with anecdotes of his meetings with world leaders such as Russian President Boris Yeltsin, his performance was more that of a wise-cracking after-dinner speaker than a stuffy politician.

Fielding a wide range of unscreened questions, the occasion was also designed to contrast with what many commentators saw as a successful, but rigidly controlled and stage-managed Labour party conference last week.

It also reminded voters of Major's famous gambit of talking to voters from a soap box during the 1992 election, widely seen as a key fact in the Conservatives' surprise victory.

Whatever the "mood music", the political message was clear.

Major said he was not prepared to sacrifice his opt-out on a single currency for electoral advantage, as so-called Eurosceptics opposed to a single currency and more European integration have demanded.

Taking up the theme of unity he has been pressing in meetings with party workers he said it was time "this party stopped conducting an internal debate with itself and started conducting a debate with the electorate and the Labour party".

But he said he would continue to insist economic conditions were applied strictly to states entering a single currency. "The British government needs to be in the negotiations to make sure the convergence criteria are appropriate."

Major's intervention came as part of a concerted attempt to paper over the party's rifts on Europe.

Earlier, Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind backed Major's line, saying: "British interests on these crucial matters would be seriously damaged if we take premature decisions."

Even Eurosceptic Conservatives were at pains to play down the splits on Wednesday in the interests of unity.

"It's time to unite and it's time to emphasise what makes us dipferent and distinctive on Europe from the Labour party... I think the argument is dying down," said former Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Norman Lamont in a radio interview. "I think we are reaching a state of greater equilibrium," said Lamont, who has been a bitter critic of Europe since leaving the government after the pound was forced out of the bloc's exchange rate mechanism in 1992.

But commentators said it would be hard for the ruling party to keep the divisions over Europe completely under wraps.

with leading ministers eyeing the possibility of a leadership battle if the Conservatives are defeated in the general election.