Blair ready to use veto over EU

Tony Blair was today set to warn the man charged with drawing up a European Union constitution that Britain is ready to veto any moves that threaten its national interest.

The Prime Minister was to deliver his warning over dinner at 10 Downing Street with former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

The meeting comes amid a series of rows over the proposed new constitution, which critics claim would hand over a swathe of new powers to Brussels, including key economic, foreign and home affairs issues.

Mr Blair has provoked fury by ruling out a referendum on the constitution, but was today ready to lay down a set of "red lines" over which Britain would refuse to go.

Any move to threaten British interests would result in a UK veto, he was warning M Giscard.

As Mr Blair's threats were being taken with a pinch of salt by opponents of the constitution, ministers came out in defence of the Prime Minister's line.

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who has played a key role in the convention drawing up the document, warned opponents, including the Tories, to "put away their placards".

He accused them of peddling "a lot of baloney" and "a lot of lies about what's really going on". There was no way ministers were going to back down over a referendum, he added.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw used a speech in Brussels today to dismiss as "absurd" claims the constitution will create a single European state. "The convention is not about the sacrifice of national civilisations, nor about the imposition of central control," Mr Straw said.

"The reality is more prosaic. It is about making an enlarged European Union more efficient and open. It is absurd to suggest, as some in Britain and elsewhere do, that the EU (of 25 states) will be a tyranny when this wider Europe has been built on tyranny's defeat."

But the row has split Labour, with former social security minister Frank Field this week tabling a private member's Bill in the Commons demanding a national vote on a document he believes will "close the door on Great Britain". M Giscard set alarm bells ringing in a radio interview last week when he called for a whole series of "common competences" across foreign and economic policy in the EU.

He said he supported moves to change the EU's name to "United Europe" and for voters to elect a powerful EU president, although he believed this would take 50 years to bring in. He also suggested Britain might lose its independent voice on the United Nations Security Council, with EU nations on the body possibly voting as a bloc in future.

Tory peer Lord Black of Crossharbour, a leading opponent of the new constitution, vowed to step up his protests. He told BBC Radio 4: "If there is anybody in the Government who imagines there is not going to be a serious controversy about whether a referendum is called for on an issue of the importance of the new constitution of Europe, then I can certainly set their minds at ease - there will be a very serious controversy about that.

"I and the newspapers I am associated with would become extremely active in promoting the view that that was a step of such importance the people had to be consulted."

The campaign for a poll appeared last night to be gathering momentum, with confirmation of plans for a cross-party group, provisionally called Vote 2004 and reported to be backed by advertiser Lord Saatchi. Group spokesman Neil O'Brien said it was expected to be launched in a few weeks' time.