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SOLANA WARNS OF 'HUGE RISK' IF EU REFUSES TURKEY ENTRY
Agence France Presse -- English
October 1, 2005 Saturday 11:27 AM GMT
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana has warned of "a
huge risk of leaving Turkey without an anchor in the world", should
the bloc not make progress on membership for the mainly Muslim state
in Monday's scheduled negotiations.
"Let's look 25 years ahead and imagine that we have said no to Turkey,
that it has been a disaster for the Middle East and there are huge
oil and energy crises," Solana said in an interview published Saturday
in daily newspaper Le Soir.
"Perhaps we will regret not having said yes to incorporating Turkey
into our way of thinking, to our philosophy and our values...
"There is a huge risk of leaving Turkey without an anchor in the
world. It is better for EU citizens to have Turkey on our side than
.. I don't know where," he warned, adding that the EU must "respect.
its commitments" to the candidate state.
Turkey first applied to join the bloc in the 1960s and was accepted
as a candidate country in 1999.
Formal entry talks are due to start in Luxembourg on Monday, but
member state Austria has prevented the agreement of a negotiating
framework by opposing full member status in favour of a "privileged
partnership", an option flatly rejected by Ankara.
EU foreign ministers are to open talks in Luxembourg late on Sunday
to try to come to a last-minute agreement on negotiation terms.
"The situation is not easy ... but I don't doubt that we will find
a solution," Solana predicted.
Entry talks have been further complicated by Ankara's ongoing refusal
to recognise Cyprus, now an EU member state, and to accept that
massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to "genocide."
An opinion poll published Saturday in Turkish daily Milliyet showed
a 10 percent drop in public support for EU entry, now running at 57.4
percent, and confidence in the bloc running at 17.5 percent.
While the candidacies of Turkey and Croatia are not officially linked,
Austria's conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Scheussel last week pressed
Croatia's case over that of Turkey.
Accession negotiations with Croatia were deferred in March due to a
lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the UN war crimes court.
However Solana warned that conflating the two applications was "not
a good idea".
"If Turkey is ready, we must begin (talks). And if Croatia is ready,
there too. But we can't have a quid pro quo with the fate of these
countries' populations," he said.
The EU working group on Croatia, which includes Solana, is due to
convene on Monday morning with chief UN warcrimes prosecutor Carla
Del Ponte.
Agence France Presse -- English
October 1, 2005 Saturday 11:27 AM GMT
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana has warned of "a
huge risk of leaving Turkey without an anchor in the world", should
the bloc not make progress on membership for the mainly Muslim state
in Monday's scheduled negotiations.
"Let's look 25 years ahead and imagine that we have said no to Turkey,
that it has been a disaster for the Middle East and there are huge
oil and energy crises," Solana said in an interview published Saturday
in daily newspaper Le Soir.
"Perhaps we will regret not having said yes to incorporating Turkey
into our way of thinking, to our philosophy and our values...
"There is a huge risk of leaving Turkey without an anchor in the
world. It is better for EU citizens to have Turkey on our side than
.. I don't know where," he warned, adding that the EU must "respect.
its commitments" to the candidate state.
Turkey first applied to join the bloc in the 1960s and was accepted
as a candidate country in 1999.
Formal entry talks are due to start in Luxembourg on Monday, but
member state Austria has prevented the agreement of a negotiating
framework by opposing full member status in favour of a "privileged
partnership", an option flatly rejected by Ankara.
EU foreign ministers are to open talks in Luxembourg late on Sunday
to try to come to a last-minute agreement on negotiation terms.
"The situation is not easy ... but I don't doubt that we will find
a solution," Solana predicted.
Entry talks have been further complicated by Ankara's ongoing refusal
to recognise Cyprus, now an EU member state, and to accept that
massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to "genocide."
An opinion poll published Saturday in Turkish daily Milliyet showed
a 10 percent drop in public support for EU entry, now running at 57.4
percent, and confidence in the bloc running at 17.5 percent.
While the candidacies of Turkey and Croatia are not officially linked,
Austria's conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Scheussel last week pressed
Croatia's case over that of Turkey.
Accession negotiations with Croatia were deferred in March due to a
lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the UN war crimes court.
However Solana warned that conflating the two applications was "not
a good idea".
"If Turkey is ready, we must begin (talks). And if Croatia is ready,
there too. But we can't have a quid pro quo with the fate of these
countries' populations," he said.
The EU working group on Croatia, which includes Solana, is due to
convene on Monday morning with chief UN warcrimes prosecutor Carla
Del Ponte.