Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Austria Pushes EU Turkey Wrangling To 11th Hour

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Austria Pushes EU Turkey Wrangling To 11th Hour

    AUSTRIA PUSHES EU TURKEY WRANGLING TO 11TH HOUR
    By Paul Taylor

    Reuters, UK
    Sept 29 2005

    Accession Begins With Acceptance

    BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Austria blocked European Union agreement on
    Thursday on a mandate to start entry negotiations with Turkey next
    week, forcing EU foreign ministers to call an emergency meeting for
    the eve of the talks to seek a deal.

    Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said it was possible negotiations
    might not start on Monday as scheduled, although intense efforts were
    continuing to solve what he called serious problems.

    A 24-1 deadlock at a meeting of EU ambassadors means the vast, poor,
    overwhelmingly Muslim candidate country will be kept on tenterhooks
    until hours before Gul is due to fly to Luxembourg to open the talks.

    Diplomats said Austria stuck to its demand that Turkey be offered
    an explicit alternative to full membership if it failed to meet
    the criteria for membership or if the EU was unable to absorb it --
    something Ankara vehemently rejects.

    Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel also insisted in newspaper interviews
    that the EU open talks immediately with Croatia, Austria's historic
    ally and Roman Catholic neighbour.

    Those negotiations were due to have started in March but have been
    frozen because of Zagreb's failure so far to satisfy a U.N. war
    crimes tribunal.

    "We are facing serious problems with the start of negotiations. We are
    in intense negotiations," Gul told a hastily arranged news conference
    in Ankara.

    Asked if there was a possibility that talks would not begin, Gul said:
    "Undoubtedly there is but there are intense efforts.... We still have
    time to solve the problems."

    He said he would not go to Luxembourg until there was clarity on the
    negotiating mandate.

    A spokesman for EU president Britain said foreign ministers would meet
    on Turkey on Sunday evening. He rejected any linkage with Croatia's
    candidacy, which he said would only be discussed on Monday.

    DEMOCRACY

    Austria demanded substantial changes that Britain had told the envoys
    would require a political decision to go back on EU leaders' unanimous
    agreement last December that the objective of the talks was accession,
    diplomats said.

    Schuessel, whose conservative Austrian People's Party is battling
    to avert defeat in regional elections in the province of Styria on
    Sunday, said European politicians should learn from the failed EU
    constitution votes in France and the Netherlands.

    "Democracy means you have to listen to the demos," he told the
    International Herald Tribune.

    His comments reflected strong public opposition in western Europe
    to admitting Turkey, which opinion polls show 80 percent of his own
    electorate opposes. Austria holds two other regional elections later
    in the month after Sunday's poll.

    Gul did not comment directly on a non-binding European Parliament
    resolution on Thursday that sought to pose new conditions unpalatable
    to Ankara, including recognition of the 1915 killing of Armenians
    as genocide.

    But he said there were issues which Turkey could never accept and
    that members of the bloc were well aware of this.

    Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan earlier said it was up to the
    EU to demonstrate its good faith, underlining the strategic benefits
    to Europe of embracing his country.

    "If the EU is not a Christian club, this has to be proven," the state
    Anatolian news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

    "What do you gain by adding 99 percent Muslim Turkey to the EU? You
    gain a bridge between the EU and the 1.5 billion-strong Islamic
    world. An alliance of civilisations will start."

    Austria takes over the EU presidency from Britain in January and
    its stance could jeopardise its relations with the United States,
    which strongly backs Turkey's accession process.

    Schuessel accused European governments of applying double standards
    to Turkey and another EU candidate, Croatia.

    "If we trust Turkey to make further progress, we should trust Croatia
    too ... It is in Europe's best interest to start negotiations with
    Croatia immediately," he told the Financial Times. "It is not fair
    to leave Croatia in an eternal waiting room."

    Other EU countries say the start of talks with the former Yugoslav
    republic depends on chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte
    certifying that it is cooperating fully with her office in the hunt
    for fugitive ex-general Ante Gotovina.

    (Additional reporting by Zerin Elci in Ankara, Annika Breidthardt in
    Vienna, and Marie-Louise Moller in Brussels)
Working...
X