BID TO SAVE EU TURKISH ENTRY TALKS

CNN
Oct 3 2005

Draft document sent to Turkey, Austria to try to broker deal

LUXEMBOURG — European foreign ministers were trying to rescue talks on
Turkey’s entry to the European Union after they were forced to postpone
them following a hard line by Austria on full Turkish membership.

EU president Britain presented Turkey and Austria with a revised
draft negotiation mandate for Turkey’s EU membership talks in a bid
to break a diplomatic deadlock and launch the talks, diplomats said.

“Things are at an advanced stage. We are checking with Ankara and
Vienna to ensure that any text we put on the table will meet the
approval of all,” a British official told Reuters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was waiting in Ankara to fly
to Luxembourg for a delayed opening ceremony late on Monday if the
compromise was accepted, the diplomats said.

But chances appeared slim, with Austria — alone among the 25 EU
nations — sticking to its insistence that predominantly Muslim Turkey
be offered something short of full membership if it cannot meet the
entry criteria.

The postponed ceremony had been due at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) in Luxembourg
and was to have involved Turkey’s Gul.

In the end following Austria’s stand, he did not leave Turkey in time
to attend — and a bid from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
to get the talks started on schedule failed.

Austria was sticking to demands that the vast, poor, Muslim country
be offered an alternative, less-than-full membership if it failed
to meet all the EU criteria. Turkey said it angrily rejected any
second-class status.(Turkish PM: No compromise)

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw — due to chair the talks –said
negotiations were “hard and difficult,” but continuing.

Straw had told reporters after a private meeting with Austrian Foreign
Minister Ursula Plassnik and a telephone call with Turkish Foreign
Minister Gul Monday morning he was not sure the talks would go ahead.

Diplomats told Reuters he had told the 24 other EU foreign ministers
upon resuming talks after only a couple of hours’ sleep: “Yes, we
are near but we are also on the edge of a precipice.

“If we go the right way we reach the sunny uplands. If we go the
wrong way, it could be catastrophic for the European Union.”

Diplomats said there were also problems between Turkey, on the one
hand, and Greece and Cyprus, on the other, over a clause in the draft
negotiating mandate demanding that Ankara not block the accession of
EU states to international organizations and treaties.

Turkey was concerned the wording could give a divided Cyprus a lever
to join the NATO defense alliance without a U.N.-brokered peace
settlement on the Mediterranean island.

Turkish hardliners had argued that Turkey could prevent Ankara blocking
a divided Cyprus from joining NATO.

Diplomats revealed how U.S. Secretary of State Rice had stepped in
Monday to try to rescue the talks.

They told Reuters that Rice had spoke by telephone with Turkish
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and assured him that the EU’s proposed
negotiating framework for the talks, due to open later on Monday,
would not impinge on NATO.

Cypriot officials denied to The Associated Press that they sought
additional demands.

But the central problem remained Austria’s insistence — alone among
the 25 EU nations, including Cyprus — that Ankara be offered a
status short of accession if it failed to meet the criteria or if
the EU was unable to absorb it.

Straw had urged that all member states had to fulfil their many
promises to Turkey, a long-establish NATO member and strategic ally
of America and Europe, British sources said.

He also warned that pulling the plug now risked widening the divide
between the Christian and Muslim worlds, the UK’s Press Association
reported.

Turkish financial markets weakened on the uncertainty in Luxembourg,
with the main share index down 2.3 percent and the lira down almost
1 percent against the dollar. Although there was no apparent markets
panic, failure of talks could deal a longer term blow to political
reform and foreign investment in Turkey.

“We are not striving to begin negotiations no matter what, at any
cost,” Gul said in an interview published Sunday in Turkey’s Yeni
Safak newspaper. “If the problems aren’t solved, then the negotiations
won’t begin.”

Outgoing German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned his colleagues
that Turkey might walk away if the EU watered down the terms on offer
any further.

“If you want to open negotiations, you have to remember we have to
have someone to open them with,” a diplomat told Reuters he had told
the meeting Sunday.

Cyprus issue The EU has already angered many Turks by demanding that
it recognize Cyprus soon and open its ports and airports to traffic
from the divided Mediterranean island.

The European Parliament compounded Turkish ire last week by saying
Turkey must recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians under Ottoman
rule as an act of genocide before it can join the EU.

EU diplomats had hoped Austria would ease its stance after regional
elections in Styria province Sunday. Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel’s
People’s Party lost power there for the first time since 1945 despite
his brinkmanship on Turkey.

Schuessel has informally linked the Turkish issue to a demand that
the EU open accession talks immediately with Austria’s largely Roman
Catholic neighbor, Croatia.

But those talks have been frozen until Zagreb satisfies U.N. war
crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte that it is cooperating fully in
the hunt for a fugitive indicted ex-general.

Accepting the mostly poor, predominantly agricultural Turkey into the
bloc has been met with resistance across the EU. Recent polls show
a majority of French, German and Austrian voters oppose admitting
Turkey, and a majority of Danes would rather see non-EU candidate,
Ukraine, in the EU than an Islamic country.

Turkey has accepted unprecedented conditions to take part in the EU
negotiations, including an open-ended halt to the movement of Turkish
workers into the bloc.

Turkish immigration remains a thorny issue in many EU states and
anti-Turkish sentiment figured in votes in the EU constitution in
France and the Netherlands.

Austrians in particular have some deep-rooted historical mistrust
of Turkey, seeing themselves as Europe’s gatekeepers ever since they
vanquished the Ottoman Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna. (Austrians
troubled by Turkey)