Slovenia split in run-up to Nato referendum

Slovenia is to vote tomorrow on whether to join Nato, with opinion finely balanced and the war in Iraq likely to dent popular support for membership of the western alliance.

A vote against joining would represent a further severe setback for an alliance deeply at odds with itself and struggling to redefine its purpose.

The small former Yugoslav republic of 2 million people is the only one of the seven east European states invited to join Nato last November to be holding a referendum on Nato membership.

Anti-Nato sentiment in the region is growing, not least because of the Iraq crisis, and Nato opponents in Slovakia are also mobilising for a referendum on membership against government resistance.

The Slovene government, too, was less than keen on the referendum. It grudgingly agreed, but insisted it be merely "consultative" and non-binding, meaning the government could overrule a No vote.

But parliament in the capital, Ljubljana, decided a fortnight ago that tomorrow's vote would be binding and that its results would need to be respected by the government.

Within days of the poll, Nato is to wind up accession talks with the seven candidates - the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.

While the Baltic and Balkan candidates are firm supporters of Washington on Iraq, Slovenia, by far the wealthiest and most successful of the seven, is much more ambivalent.

President Janez Drnovsek pledged this week that Slovenia would have no part in the war in Iraq, assuaging popular anxiety that joining Nato would mean having to follow US orders.

Before the war started, he also admitted that "unilateral" US action in Iraq without a UN mandate would complicate his campaign to take the country into Nato 13 years after Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia.

Opinion polls last month indicated an outcome too close to call, with 37% in favour and 36% against. In recent weeks, support for Nato appears to have risen to 48%. But the war may reverse that rise.

Another external event could also have a strong impact. The assassination of the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, last week has stirred fears of regional instability, helping the pro-Nato camp that argues the western alliance offers a safe haven in a turbulent area.

The Nato referendum is one part of a twin election, with voters also being balloted on European Union membership. Support for the EU is not in doubt and could extend as high as 80%, according to the polls.

But Brussels is upset that the two organisations are being lumped together in the minds of Slovenes, fearing that reservations about Nato will diminish support for the EU.

Urging that Slovenia should be "at home in Europe and secure in Nato", the government has spent more than £200,000 on the pro-Nato campaign, with leading officials and politicians from Brussels, Germany and Britain descending on Ljubljana in recent weeks to press the case for membership.

Amid a robust and mature debate on the pros and cons, the opposition argues that the government has failed to ensure a level playing field for the campaign.