EURO MPS MAKE NEW TURKEY DEMANDS

BBC
Tuesday, 5 September 2006

Some EU leaders are lukewarm about Turkey’s bid

European MPs have criticised Turkey’s slow pace of reform and said
it should recognise the massacre of Armenians in 1915 as genocide
before joining the EU.

The European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee members also
urged more guarantees of freedom of expression and religion.

Turkey began EU membership talks last year and its progress will be
assessed by the European Commission in October.

It denies the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was
genocide.

The report by the European Parliament foreign affairs committee will
be voted by the whole parliament later this month.

It insists there are "persistent shortcomings" in areas such as freedom
of expression, as well as religious, minority and women’s rights.

‘Politically biased’

The Turkish foreign ministry responded by saying that elements of the
report lacked realism, were politically biased, and set conditions
for membership that were anything but objective.

Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were massacred by Turkish
troops as part of efforts to drive them out of eastern Turkey in 1915.

Ankara has always denied this was genocide, and insists the number
of Armenian deaths has been exaggerated.

The EU enlargement commissioner has already warned of the potential
failure of Ankara’s membership bid, the BBC’s Alex Kroeger reports
from Strasbourg.

The MEPs’ report says that accession negotiations could even come to
a halt.

The parliamentary rapporteur on Turkey, Dutch MEP Camille Eurlings,
called the slowdown in reform regrettable and urged Turkey to make
progress.

If there was no progress, he said, stagnation would mean regression.