TURKEY PROTESTS CYPRUS-FRANCE MILITARY ACCORD
Assyrian International News Agency, CA
March 1 2007
ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey protested a military cooperation accord
signed between France and Cyprus, saying Thursday that it threatened
stability in the eastern Mediterranean and would affect efforts to
reach a solution to the Cyprus problem.
The French Defense Ministry confirmed that a military agreement
with Cyprus was signed in Paris on Monday during a visit by the
Cypriot foreign minister, but did not provide further details. The
French Foreign Ministry said the accord was "standard" between two
EU members and that it involved military training and information-
and knowledge-sharing.
Turkey has vowed to defend the interests of Turkish Cypriots, and
stations some 40,000 troops on the north of the divided island.
"France’s signing of a military agreement with the Southern Cypriot
Greek Administration is a worrying development," Turkey’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement Thursday. It said the accord contradicted
previous agreements on the island’s status and "represented a threat
to the stability and security of the Eastern Mediterranean."
Tensions over the status of Cyprus, an EU member, have thrown Turkey’s
European Union membership bid into disarray.
Turkey props up a government in northern Cyprus that no other country
in the world recognizes, and it refuses to recognize the Greek Cypriot
administration as the primary authority on the island.
This has also been a period of heightened tension in Turkish-French
relations. France’s parliament voted in October to approve a bill
that would criminalize denying that the mass killings of Armenians
by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century was genocide, prompting
Turkish trade organizations to call for a boycott of French companies
and the Turkish military to say it would break off all contacts with
its French counterparts.
Turkey vehemently denies that it committed genocide against Armenians,
saying they were killed in interethnic fighting as the Ottoman Empire
collapsed.