Obama urges EU to welcome Turkey
By Joshua Chaffin in Prague, Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris and Chris
Bryant in Berlin

FT
Published: April 5 2009 18:31 | Last updated: April 5 2009 18:31

On the eve of his first visit to Turkey, US President Barack Obama on
Sunday urged European leaders to overcome their reservations and grant
the country full admission to the European Union as a way to build
stronger ties to the Muslim world.

`Moving towards Turkish membership in the EU would be an important
signal of your commitment to this agenda and ensure that we continue
to anchor Turkey firmly in Europe,’ Mr Obama told fellow heads of
state at an EU-US summit in Prague.

Mr Obama’s plea restated a well-known US position but had special
resonance since it came just hours before he was due to leave for
Ankara as part of his first visit to a mostly Muslim country. It was
swiftly rejected by two of the EU’s biggest member states ` France and
Germany ` however.

`I have always been opposed to this entry and I still am,’ French
president Nicolas Sarkozy said in a television interview. `When it
comes to EU matters, it’s for member-states of the European Union to
decide,’ Mr Sarkozy added.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she believed it was `in all
our interests’ that Turkey develop close ties to the EU, but
suggesting that this could take the form of a `privileged partnership’
rather than full membership.

The exchanges over Turkey stood out at a summit meeting that was
largely dedicated to emphasising the renewed health of a transatlantic
relationship frayed by the Iraq war.

Appearing beside José Manuel Barroso, the president of the
European Commission, Mr Obama called the EU-US relationship `one of
the key foundations for progress in the world’ and vowed to `pursue it
and strengthen it’ in the future.

That sentiment, endorsed by a beaming Mr Barroso, appeared to trump
lingering differences between the two parties on fundamental issues `
such as how to tackle the economic crisis effort in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama also called on EU members to accept some detainees from the
US prison in Guantánamo Bay to help him meet his pledge to
close the centre by January next year. The US President said it was
`urgent that the European Council issue a common position supporting
the right of your member states to accept detainees if they so
choose’.

EU members have been split on how far they are prepared to go and
whether they would accept Guantánamo inmates ` particularly
those with no link to their own countries.

Mr Barroso offered special praise for the Obama administration’s
commitment to fight global warming, saying that the `EU was now much
more on a convergence path with our American friends’ heading into a
December meeting in Copenhagen aimed at achieving a global pact on
climate change.