|
NEW YORK: French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner
said Tuesday that he would meet with his Turkish counterpart Ali
Babacan to discuss Ankara’s contentious bid to join the European
Union.
Kouchner said he and French
President Nicolas Sarkozy “spent one hour and a half with Prime
Minister [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan yesterday and we decided that the
Turkish foreign minister and I will be in charge to establish a sort
of working group to consider the whole possibilities” on
Turkey’s EU membership.
Speaking at the US think tank
Council on Foreign Relations, Kouchner said he was among those who
convinced Sarkozy, who has spoken out against Turkey joining the EU,
to not put a spanner in Turkey’s membership negotiations.
The French foreign minister said
he thought it would be a mistake not to accept a moderate Muslim
country such as Turkey as this would play into the hands of radical
Islamists.
Sarkozy said last week he did not
believe Turkey belongs in the EU, and that “what I wish to offer
Turkey is a true partnership with Europe, it is not integration with
Europe.”
Kouchner said: “The French
position is very clear: we have time.”
Of the 35 chapters, or policy
areas, in EU membership negotiations “only five suppose the
integration inside the European Union, and 30 may be accepted as a
sort of partnership. So we’ll open the 30 first and it will take
years and years,” he said.
“Meanwhile we have good
relations with Turkey,” said Kouchner, who along with Sarkozy was
in New York for the UN General Assembly session.
Turkey began EU accession
negotiations in October 2005 but it has only managed to open four of
the 35 chapters that all candidates must complete to join.
Turkey’s talks are expected to
last at least a decade, with no guarantee of membership at the end
of it all.
In addition to a lack of
enthusiasm for the prospect of Turkey joining the EU in some member
countries, the process has also been hampered by Ankara’s refusal
to open its ports and airports to ships and planes from EU member
Cyprus.
--AFP
|
