AUSTRIA PUSHES EU TURKEY WRANGLING TO 11TH HOUR
By Paul Taylor

Reuters, UK
Sept 29 2005

Accession Begins With Acceptance

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Austria blocked European Union agreement on
Thursday on a mandate to start entry negotiations with Turkey next
week, forcing EU foreign ministers to call an emergency meeting for
the eve of the talks to seek a deal.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said it was possible negotiations
might not start on Monday as scheduled, although intense efforts were
continuing to solve what he called serious problems.

A 24-1 deadlock at a meeting of EU ambassadors means the vast, poor,
overwhelmingly Muslim candidate country will be kept on tenterhooks
until hours before Gul is due to fly to Luxembourg to open the talks.

Diplomats said Austria stuck to its demand that Turkey be offered
an explicit alternative to full membership if it failed to meet
the criteria for membership or if the EU was unable to absorb it —
something Ankara vehemently rejects.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel also insisted in newspaper interviews
that the EU open talks immediately with Croatia, Austria’s historic
ally and Roman Catholic neighbour.

Those negotiations were due to have started in March but have been
frozen because of Zagreb’s failure so far to satisfy a U.N. war
crimes tribunal.

“We are facing serious problems with the start of negotiations. We are
in intense negotiations,” Gul told a hastily arranged news conference
in Ankara.

Asked if there was a possibility that talks would not begin, Gul said:
“Undoubtedly there is but there are intense efforts…. We still have
time to solve the problems.”

He said he would not go to Luxembourg until there was clarity on the
negotiating mandate.

A spokesman for EU president Britain said foreign ministers would meet
on Turkey on Sunday evening. He rejected any linkage with Croatia’s
candidacy, which he said would only be discussed on Monday.

DEMOCRACY

Austria demanded substantial changes that Britain had told the envoys
would require a political decision to go back on EU leaders’ unanimous
agreement last December that the objective of the talks was accession,
diplomats said.

Schuessel, whose conservative Austrian People’s Party is battling
to avert defeat in regional elections in the province of Styria on
Sunday, said European politicians should learn from the failed EU
constitution votes in France and the Netherlands.

“Democracy means you have to listen to the demos,” he told the
International Herald Tribune.

His comments reflected strong public opposition in western Europe
to admitting Turkey, which opinion polls show 80 percent of his own
electorate opposes. Austria holds two other regional elections later
in the month after Sunday’s poll.

Gul did not comment directly on a non-binding European Parliament
resolution on Thursday that sought to pose new conditions unpalatable
to Ankara, including recognition of the 1915 killing of Armenians
as genocide.

But he said there were issues which Turkey could never accept and
that members of the bloc were well aware of this.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan earlier said it was up to the
EU to demonstrate its good faith, underlining the strategic benefits
to Europe of embracing his country.

“If the EU is not a Christian club, this has to be proven,” the state
Anatolian news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

“What do you gain by adding 99 percent Muslim Turkey to the EU? You
gain a bridge between the EU and the 1.5 billion-strong Islamic
world. An alliance of civilisations will start.”

Austria takes over the EU presidency from Britain in January and
its stance could jeopardise its relations with the United States,
which strongly backs Turkey’s accession process.

Schuessel accused European governments of applying double standards
to Turkey and another EU candidate, Croatia.

“If we trust Turkey to make further progress, we should trust Croatia
too … It is in Europe’s best interest to start negotiations with
Croatia immediately,” he told the Financial Times. “It is not fair
to leave Croatia in an eternal waiting room.”

Other EU countries say the start of talks with the former Yugoslav
republic depends on chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte
certifying that it is cooperating fully with her office in the hunt
for fugitive ex-general Ante Gotovina.

(Additional reporting by Zerin Elci in Ankara, Annika Breidthardt in
Vienna, and Marie-Louise Moller in Brussels)