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EU should admit Turkey to show commitment to diversity: Blair

24 March 2004, 21:19 CET


The EU should allow mainly Muslim Turkey to become a member of the bloc to demonstrate its commitment to the creation of a tolerant and diverse Europe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.

"Let us show by our willingness to bring Turkey, a proud Muslim nation, into the EU on the same and equal terms as all others, that Europe is committed not just in word but in deed to a Europe of diverse races, cultures and religions all bound together by common rules and a sense of human solidarity and mutual respect," he said.

Blair was addressing reporters in Lisbon ahead of a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso.

The British premier travelled to Lisbon from Madrid, where earlier Wednesday he was among dignitaries attending a memorial service for the 190 victims of the city's March 11 train bombings.

The majority of the 13 people detained in connection with the bombings are Moroccan nationals with suspected ties to Islamic extremist network Al-Qaeda.

Turkey which straddles Europe and Asia has been trying to join the EU for decades and has faced consistent calls to remedy human rights abuses.

The country has adopted a raft of significant reforms since 1999 and argues that it has fulfilled the majority of criteria required to open membership talks, but several prominent political figures in Europe have spoken out against accepting Turkey into the EU.

One is the former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who chaired a convention charged with drafting a constitution for the EU after it expands to 25 members in May. The other is the leader of Germany's Christian Democratic opposition party, Angela Merkel.

Their reluctance to see Turkey become a member of the EU has led many people in Turkey to accuse the bloc of seeking to be a "Christian club" of nations.

EU leaders will decide in December whether Ankara has made sufficient progress in meeting the bloc's political and economic norms to sit down at the negotiating table.

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