Turkey believes it has scored a major diplomatic victory with the revival of peace talks in long-divided Cyprus, confident that it will boost the Muslim country's struggling bid to join the EU.
Ankara made unprecedented efforts for the resumption of negotiations on the island, pressuring hardline Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to agree to the tight conditions set by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for the peace process.
The EU has warned Turkey, which has held the Turkish Cypriot northern third of the island since 1974, that its own membership bid will suffer if Cyprus is not reunified by May 1 when it is set to become an EU member.
"The process which is now to begin is a process that will lead to Turkey's EU membership," Ugur Ziyal, the undersecretary of the Turkish foreign ministry, told Anatolia news agency in New York late Friday.
He was speaking after the Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot sides agreed to return to the negotiating table on Feb. 19.
And Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed confidence that a solution in Cyprus would persuade EU leaders to open accession negotiations with Turkey, the only membership candidate which has so far failed to do so, when they take up the issue in December.
"Our expectation is obvious. We need to complete several other [democracy] reforms. When we finish everything and when the Cyprus issue is settled, nobody can say no to the start of [accession] negotiations," Gul told journalists on his way to a regional meeting in Kuwait, Anatolia reported.
He cautioned, however that "there is a long way to go and a lot of work to do" before Cyprus is eventually reunified.
At the end of talks in New York, the Cypriot leaders agreed on a formula drawn up by Ankara to get Turkey and Greece involved in the talks on issues which they fail to resolve by March 22.
If the two motherlands also fail to iron out the differences by March 29 then Annan will become the final arbiter.
Both Cypriot sides had earlier objected to Annan's arbitration and the tight timetable.
Amid reports of behind-the-scene bickering with Denktash, Ankara managed to force him to toe the line, particularly after the influential Turkish army also gave its blessing to the settlement scheme.
Turkey and Denktash have taken most of the blame for the failure of international efforts to reunify Cyprus over the years.
Observers here said that with the latest peace push, the Turkish pair has finally succeeded in cornering the Greek Cypriots, who have never wholeheartedly endorsed Annan's peace plan either.
"The agreement on revival of talks is the first political and diplomatic gain that the Turkish side has won over the Greek Cypriots in recent years," the liberal Radikal daily wrote.
Ankara has long accused the EU of encouraging intransigence on the Greek Cypriot side by promising it membership regardless of whether Cyprus is reunified in time or not.
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