As Austria's right-wing government starts its second full week in office amid street protests at home and diplomatic sanctions from abroad, its leaders are preparing for a long period of isolation.
"The reaction of our 14 EU partners is critical. It is bitter, painful and unfair. We should have no illusions - it won't end tomorrow. But we must prepare the ground so that it can be withdrawn later," the Austrian Chancellor, Dr Wolfgang Schussel, said yesterday.
Dr Schussel, whose conservative People's Party sparked the international outcry by forming a coalition with Mr Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party, is planning a campaign to improve Austria's image abroad. In the longer term, he hopes to persuade some of Austria's EU partners to lift their ban on bilateral contacts with Vienna.
"One country can't do it alone - that would breach the principle of solidarity. A group within the 14 must say, `we have seen positive signals, now we must react positively', " he said.
Vienna is likely to target those EU states which were most reluctant to join in the diplomatic freeze - including Denmark, Britain and Ireland. France and Belgium are the driving forces behind the sanctions and Germany's centre-left government is also squarely behind the EU action.
Mr Haider yesterday described the EU boycott as "a plot by corrupt social democrats" and urged Austrians to ignore it. He has threatened to take legal action against the Sunday Telegraph for claiming yesterday that he described Winston Churchill as "one of the worst criminals of the century". Mr Haider denies making the remark.
Meanwhile, opposition to the Freedom Party's participation in government spread to South America at the weekend when Argentina, once a haven for fleeing Nazis and now home to Latin America's largest Jewish community, said it would scale back diplomatic ties.
The Foreign Ministry said it had "transferred" its ambassador to Austria, Mr Juan Carlos Kreckler, back to Buenos Aires after Mr Kreckler, appointed by former president Carlos Menem, in October briefed the government that Mr Haider was a "democrat".
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, will get a baptism of fire today at his first meeting of EU foreign ministers at which the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner, makes an appeal to fellow ministers for understanding of her country's position.
Ms Ferrero-Waldner, a member of the People's Party, (OVP), is likely to get a very cool reaction to her call to relax diplomatic sanctions, not least because of weekend comments by the leader of her coalition partner party, Mr Haider, about EU enlargement.
He said in a Hungarian newspaper interview on Saturday that the EU should admit countries bordering on Austria only when they reach Austrian wage levels. Today the EU is due to start formal accession talks with the second wave of membership candidates - Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria.
The meeting is also due to launch formally the treaty-changing Inter-Governmental Conference and to discuss sanctions in place against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly a flight ban in force since the NATO campaign in Kosovo. The foreign ministers will also be laying the groundwork for the EU summit in Lisbon on March 23rd and 24th, and taking the first institutional steps towards setting up a rapid reaction EU force mandated by the Helsinki summit.