Agence France Presse — English
December 13, 2004 Monday 4:59 PM GMT

EU digests Turkey in pre-summit talks

BRUSSELS

The European Union Monday launched a week of furious haggling on
Turkey with the bloc’s Dutch presidency upbeat on its EU prospects
but critics raising the stakes against the Muslim-majority country.

With EU leaders set this week to decide whether to launch
long-delayed accession talks with Ankara, Turkey’s Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said its EU bid was nothing less than the
“project of the century”.

The Netherlands, Britain and Germany all reaffirmed their backing for
Turkey’s EU bid. But discord in the 25-nation bloc simmered as EU
foreign ministers held talks to set the stage for the summit Thursday
and Friday.

The heads of government are expected to give a green light for Turkey
to open accession negotiations fully five years after it was formally
endorsed as an EU candidate.

But their approval will be hedged with a raft of conditions and
accompanied by warnings that the talks could be suspended if Turkey
flagrantly violates EU principles, and that there is no guarantee of
membership at the end of the day.

According to diplomats, the foreign ministers failed to make any
headway on the most pressing question — when should the talks start?

Turkey wants the EU to abide by a promise to launch the negotiations
“without delay”.

But the latest draft summit conclusions left the date open, with
France for one pushing for it to be held back until the second half
of 2005 to avoid the Turkey question clouding a French referendum on
the EU’s constitution.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier upped the ante by calling on
Turkey to admit to the World War I massacre of Armenians by their
Ottoman rulers during its EU negotiations.

And while Austria renewed its demand for Turkey to be offered a
“privileged partnership” rather than full EU membership, Cyprus
demanded Turkey move by next March on normalising its ties with the
divided Mediterranean island.

But meeting in Berlin, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the EU would offer Turkey
nothing short of membership negotiations at this week’s summit.

“We agree on several points: first, the aim is membership and the aim
will not be watered down,” Schroeder told reporters after talks with
Balkenende, whose country currently holds the EU presidency.

“Secondly, there will be a date (for the start of membership
negotiations) and thirdly, as the commission already stated, the
negotiation process will take a long time. We expect 10-15 years with
an open outcome to the talks.”

“I have the feeling that we will reach consensus at the end of the
week,” Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said here, while rebuffing talk
of a privileged partnership.

“Turkey is a candidate (for EU membership). Turkey is also aiming for
membership and that will be, let’s say, the objective of
negotiations,” he told reporters.

Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovou had earlier evoked the threat
of Nicosia vetoing Turkey’s EU bid unless it recognises his
internationally backed government, rather than the breakaway
Turkish-Cypriot republic.

But he later told reporters at the EU talks here: “We have not asked
for legally defined recognition but normalisation of relations in
general and in particular, in the bilateral field.”

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel meanwhile reiterated his
opposition to full Turkish membership of the EU, pointing to adhesion
costs estimated at between 25 billion and 30 billion euros a year.

“Who should pay that?” he asked the economic magazine Trend in an
interview to appear Tuesday.

Ankara, however, believes that it has earned the right to a date to
open EU accession talks by ramming through a raft of tough reforms to
its political system, judiciary, military and economy.

“Turkey has kept to its side of the bargain,” British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw said here, rejecting the imposition of new
conditions on Erdogan’s government.

As for Erdogan, nothing less than harmony between the West and Islam
is at stake.

“To have a country like Turkey, where the cultures of Islam and
democracy have merged together, taking part in such an institution as
the EU will bring harmony of civilisations,” he told Britain’s daily
The Independent.