EU STALLS ON CYPRUS TO KEEP TURKEY TALKS ALIVE
By Daniel Dombey and George Parker in Brussels and Vincent Boland in Ankara

FT
September 5 2006 17:19

Brussels is seeking to prevent a complete breakdown in Turkey’s
43-year-quest to join the European Union by deferring one of the most
explosive issues until after the country’s elections next year.

Officials fear that with the pace of reform slowing in Turkey
and worries continuing within the EU about further enlargement,
Turkey’s membership talks might never start again if they were to stop
now. But a dispute with Cyprus, which is an EU member state but is not
recognised by Turkey, threatens to bring the whole process to a halt.

"We need a plan B to limit the damage and avoid a complete suspension
of negotiations, because that would kill the momentum," said a senior
Commission official. "We have to find ways and means to muddle through
until after the Turkish elections."

The EU has given Ankara a deadline of the end of this year to open
up its ports and airports to Cyprus. But Turkey has declared it has
no intention of doing so, because of the EU’s failure to end the
isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community in the north of the island.

President Jacques Chirac of France has warned Turkey that membership
talks will be jeopardised if Ankara fails to comply with the EU’s
demand. Although the Commission hopes that only talks on related
issues will be affected, Cyprus has made clear its plans to veto all
further stages of the negotiations unless Turkey opens up its ports.

As concern mounts within the EU that the suspension of Ankara’s
negotiations could prove disastrous for the country’s ties with the
west, Olli Rehn, the EU’s enlargement commissioner, is seeking to
persuade both Turkey and Cyprus to hand the ports case to the European
Court of Justice.

That way, the Commission believes, the issue could be put on ice
until after Turkey’s parliamentary elections next year, when both
sides Turkey would have more scope to negotiate.

Officials in Ankara had no immediate comment on the Commission’s
initiative.

But diplomats said Turkey would be reluctant to refer the case to
the courts. EU officials add that it is overwhelmingly likely to
lose any case. Cyprus is also resisting such a course of action,
since it would water down the EU’s demand that Turkey act this year.

The Commission hopes that pressure from the EU’s three big powers –
France, Germany and the UK – will push both sides to agree to scale
down the dispute.

Other attempts to defuse the tension, notably EU-sponsored talks
between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, have failed. Greek Cypriot
objections have also prevented the EU’s fulfilling a promise to allow
northern Cyprus to trade directly with the rest of the EU.

Yesterday Ankara rejected a demand by the European parliament that
it recognise the mass killings of Armenians during the first world
war as genocide.

Turkey rejects the charge. Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, the prime
minister, said: "Our position regarding the so-called Armenian genocide
is very clear, and nobody should expect us to change it."