Turkey signalled its growing impatience with the EU on Thursday night by warning that its ministers would not turn up in Luxembourg for membership talks until they are sent a copy of the ground rules.
Irritated by the EU's failure to reach agreement on a framework for the talks, Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared he would remain in Turkey until he is sent a copy.
"Everyone knows there's no point in going to Luxembourg without seeing this document," Gul said, warning that the talks may fail to begin as planned on Monday.
Gul spoke out after Austria blocked an agreement on the ground rules for Turkey's membership talks in a last-ditch attempt to downgrade it to associate EU membership. At a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels, Austria demanded the talks should include -- from the outset -- "alternatives" to full EU membership.
This forced Britain, which is chairing the talks, to convene an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg tomorrow night. Britain, which is Turkey's leading champion in the EU, will be placed in the embarrassing position of telling Gul tomorrow night not to board his plane until the EU sorts out its differences.
"You can't ask the Turks to turn up and then tell them to hang round in the waiting room while Europe sorts out its differences," one EU diplomat said.
Turkey's irritation had been mounting all day. Earlier the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called on European leaders to prove they are not running an exclusively "Christian club."
"If the EU is not a Christian club, this has to be proven," Erdogan said during a visit to the Gulf.
There is speculation that Austria will cave in at the last minute. It may give ground if the EU is able to make encouraging noises about Croatia's EU membership talks. These were suspended in March after the EU concluded that the country was failing to cooperate properly with the international war crimes tribunal in its attempts to put on trial a convicted war criminal, Ante Gotovina.
Carla del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, was to visit Zagreb yesterday to assess whether Croatia is cooperating. Del Ponte will then report to a special taskforce of EU foreign ministers on Monday. The taskforce will then interview Croatian ministers.
Austria says there is no link between Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, and Austria's near neighbor, Croatia.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS