Turkey aims to reassure Prodi over Cyprus

BRUSSELS (EurActiv) – EU candidate Turkey will try to reassure European Commission President Romano Prodi on Thursday that it will do all it can to end the 30-year division of Cyprus before the island joins the wealthy bloc in May.

Prodi, the first head of the EU executive body to visit urkey since 1963, is due to arrive in Ankara at 1300 GMT for talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and other officials.

"We are not expecting any earth-shattering announcements, but the visit marks a recognition on the part of the Commission that 2004 will be the year of Turkey and of Cyprus," one Ankara-based EU diplomat said.

Erdogan’s government has won praise from Prodi for a flurry of human rights reforms aimed at persuading EU leaders at a summit set for December to open long-delayed accession talks for Turkey. But Cyprus could still wreck Ankara’s EU ambitions.

Cyprus has been split on ethnic lines since Turkish troops intervende in the northern part of the island in 1974 after a brief Greek Cypriot coup backed by the military then ruling Greece.

Without a settlement, the Greek Cypriots will be regarded as representing the whole island, cementing its ethnic division, deepening the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots and jeopardising Turkey’s chances of starting EU accession talks in early 2005.

The continued division could also aggravate volatile
relations with NATO partner and EU member Greece. Prodi’s visit coincides with the formation of a Turkish
Cypriot coalition government which has pledged to resume peace negotiations on the basis of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s blueprint for reunifying the Mediterranean island.

READY TO TALK
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Prodi would
receive a clear message from his hosts in Ankara. "We will tell (Prodi) that we are ready to start negotiations immediately within the framework of the Annan plan
to find a solution in Cyprus," he said.

But Gul said Turkey would also urge the Commission to put pressure on the Greek Cypriot side to make concessions. A Turkish government official said Ankara wanted the United States to play a more active role in the search for a Cyprus solution. Washington strongly supports Turkey’s EU bid.

"There is an idea that the United States be included in the negotiation process as a facilitator," he told Reuters, adding that Erdogan would raise the matter when he meets U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington later this month. The "facilitator" could even be U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said.

EU diplomats in Ankara said this could prove a double-edged sword for Turkey, however. They said the EU disliked Turkey’s habit of appealing to Washington, its NATO ally, to help iron out its problems with Europe and also noted that the U.S. envoy on Cyprus, Thomas
Weston, had strongly criticised the Turkish Cypriot stance.

Prodi will address the Turkish Parliament on Thursday evening and attend a dinner hosted by Erdogan. He will visit Turkey’s commercial and cultural capital Istanbul on Friday.