An agreement to open official membership negotiations for Turkey to join the European Union is a welcome and important step - for Turkey, for Europe and for other countries that want to build a world in which identity is based primarily on shared respect for human rights, not ethnicity or religion.

True, the agreement is marred by some unfortunate omissions and references. These may, justifiably, pique the Turks, who first sought entry into the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union, 45 years ago. For one, there is no end date for negotiations. Also, the agreement states that negotiations may be stopped if Turkey backslides in its reforms, a tenet that is implicit in the talks and thus did not need to be made explicit.

Such conditions might satisfy a growing resistance to Turkish membership in the European public, but it could also feed Turkish suspicions that some European leaders are looking for ways to hold Turkey at bay.

It will be up to the Turks to overlook these slights, and for Turkish and European leaders to make the powerful arguments for Turkey's membership. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has not flinched from the goal of making the Turkish republic a secular democratic state - the primary criterion for union membership.

In return, the Europeans, by accepting the predominantly Muslim country, show that Islam does not preclude embracing European values. Indeed, as an associate member of the European community since 1963 and a NATO member since 1952, Turkey has as strong a claim to a place in Europe and the West as the new east European Union members.

The negotiations are expected to take about 10 years - plenty of time to resolve existing issues. Along the way, the Turks should be given annual progress reports that close in on a specific end date, so they are not required to be endlessly patient. Forty-five years is already long enough.