The EU's incoming president, Portugese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, said on Saturday he aimed to keep entry negotiations with Turkey on track despite French opposition.
"We must be first and foremost loyal at what we pledged to do," Socrates said on the eve of taking over the EU's presidency from Germany. "The most important thing is that we should be loyal in these negotiations. We should be balanced and moderate."
Socrates, speaking to reporters at his official residence, said all EU leaders should "act in a responsible fashion and respect the credibility of Europe" in respecting the deal the bloc made with Ankara when it opened entry talks with Turkey two years ago.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to halt Turkey's membership bid and has called on the EU to launch a debate to set the bloc's final borders.
Portuguese officials are keen to keep a discussion of the contentious entry bid on the EU's back burner, but Sarkozy has demanded a special "working group" be set up to outline eventual final borders beyond which the bloc will not expand.
Socrates said if that if the EU met Sarkozy's demands it could damage the 27-nation bloc's image across the world, notably in the Islamic world.
He added that Portugal will use its six-month presidency to consider expanding the negotiations further.
France last week used its veto to limit entry talks with Turkey in two minor policy areas.
The two sides agreed to open talks on statistics and financial control, but France prevented the expansion of the negotiations to the more important economic and monetary policy.
Current talks cover only two areas -- science and research and industrial affairs, although EU entry talks normally cover 35 negotiating areas.
Socrates said it was more important for the EU to concentrate on completing a new reform treaty rather than starting a highly divisive debate over Turkey.
Portugal has been tasked with completing and getting all 27 EU leaders to sign a new treaty, finalizing a deal reached by EU leaders last weekend.
The new treaty is meant to streamline how the EU makes decisions.
The EU's entry talks with Turkey have made scant progress. Cyprus, Greece and France have slowed them over misgivings of Ankara's right to join and over its refusal to officially recognize EU member Cyprus.
The EU partially suspended the negotiations last December in protest of Turkey's refusal to open its ports and airports to trade with Cyprus.
Turkey says it will not do so until the EU takes steps to end the international isolation of the Turkish Cypriot northern half of Cyprus.
The southern Greek Cypriot side of the island joined the bloc in 2004. Cyprus has been divided since 1974
The EU, however, has so far failed to get Cyprus to lift its opposition to live up to a three-year-old promise to provide aid and open direct trade links with the Turkish Cypriots.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS