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Deadlock threatens Turkey's EU hopes

EU foreign ministers were set for emergency last-ditch talks in Luxembourg late last night to try to break a deadlock threatening the planned start of landmark EU membership talks with Turkey.

The hastily arranged talks -- on the eve of the scheduled negotiations with Ankara today -- will focus on Austrian demands that the EU consider something less than full membership for the vast, mainly Muslim country.

There is also growing speculation that a resolution of the dispute may depend on parallel EU ruminations on Croatia, whose planned start of EU talks has been delayed because of a dispute over an alleged war criminal.

The EU's British presidency has voiced confidence that the Turkey standoff can be resolved, but diplomats warned that the issue was "on a knife-edge," while Turkey threatened to boycott the talks.

"It has been painful, fighting over every word," said one EU source close to the talks, which focus on the exact wording of what the EU is offering Turkey.

EU leaders agreed at a summit last December to start membership talks with Turkey -- which has been knocking on the EU's door for over four decades -- on Oct. 3 (today).

But tensions flared again in July when Ankara, while signing an updated customs accord with the enlarged EU including Cyprus, issued a declaration reiterating its refusal to recognize the Nicosia government.

A dispute over how to respond to that has been resolved, but a row remains over the negotiating framework -- the guiding procedures and principles for the accession talks.

It is unclear exactly what change of wording will satisfy Austria. The current draft -- accepted by all 24 other EU states -- says that EU entry is the main aim of the talks. Vienna would like that replaced, or at least complemented, by an offer of a lesser "privileged partnership."

Turkish leaders, whose reputation for negotiating brinkmanship is well known, have warned they may yet not turn up in Luxembourg today.

"If we fail to see the honesty we expect, Turkey's response will undoubtedly be very different from what has been said so far," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Friday.

However, on Saturday he said he had held a "very positive" phone conversation with Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.

One unknown factor in all this is exactly how much stock Austria puts in neighboring Croatia being given the green light today to start its own delayed talks.

Croatia was originally to have started EU entry talks in March, but its case has been held up by its lack of cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal, notably over a key war crimes suspect, fugitive general Ante Gotovina.

The court's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, visited Zagreb on Friday and gave few signs that things had improved.

While no official link exists between the candidacies of Croatia and Turkey, an EU diplomat said: "The general feeling is that movement on Croatia would allow it [Austria] to be more flexible on the negotiating framework."

Schuessel meanwhile has denied that his hardline position on Turkey was designed to improve his conservative party's chances in a regional election in Styria yesterday.

Failure to start the Turkey talks would only deepen an EU crisis triggered by French and Dutch voters' rejection of its draft constitution in May and June. Many cited opposition to Turkey's EU hopes as a reason for voting no.
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