EU foreign ministers warned Turkey officials yesterday that the country needs to respect its free-trade pact with Cyprus, otherwise the European forum would not continue any membership negotiations with it.


This comes as a result of Turkey threatening to boycott the first stage of the entry negotiations yesterday, prompting an acid reply from the EU, which stated that the progress of Turley's accession is entirely dependent on its willingness to open up airports and harbors to EU-member Cyprus. To inflame things up, Cyprus also delivered a threat that it would delay the process unless its partial Turkish military occupation, which has been running the northern part of the country since 1974, which refuses to acknowledge the Greek Cypriot government in the south, would be evacuated and Turkey would decide to allow free trade with the country's planes and ships, as stipulated in the pact.

The EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn stated in a news conference in Luxembourg yesterday that "Turkey is expected to meet its obligations", highlighting "the necessity for Turkey to respect its commitments". Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, the chief coordinator of the negotiations, was even more radical in her statements: "If there are no concrete steps here, there will be serious difficulties sooner or later. There's a risk of running into a dead end".

In reply, the Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul stated during the Luxembourg press conference that the EU and his country have "different views on this point", underlining the fact that Greek, not Turkish Cypriots, were the ones who opposed the unification of the island in 2004, and urged the EU to place its own trade embargo on northern Cyprus.

Apart from this political feud, other issues loom: according to Rehn, "a number of concerns" are still related to Turkey, which include freedom of the press, discrimination of non-Muslim individuals and the improvement of living conditions in the south eastern part of the country where Kurds live. "I trust this message will be taken seriously in Turkey,'' Rehn declared.