(BRDO PRI KRANJU) - US President George W. Bush declared Tuesday that Turkey should be granted European Union membership as he attended his eighth and final summit with EU leaders.

"We strongly believe Turkey ought to be a member of the EU, and we appreciate Turkey's record of democratic and free market reforms and working to realize its EU aspirations," Bush said.

Bush ended Tuesday his two-day visit to Slovenia that opened his last European tour as US president during which he will also visit Germany and France, states that have expressed their scepticism over Ankara's EU membership.

Turkey began EU membership talks in 2005 opening so far only six out of the 35 policy chapters that each EU candidate has to successfully negotiate before becoming eligible for membership.

Ankara's progress has been hampered by its diplomatic impasse with Cyprus and reluctance in some EU quarters to admit such a large, mainly Muslim nation.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops seized and occupied its northern third in response to an Athens engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

The French National Assembly will decide in July whether to make a referendum obligatory for accepting new EU member countries with populations more than five percent the bloc's entire size -- a move seen by Ankara as a discriminatory act targetting Turkey.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also opposes full Turkish membership and believes the country still has a long way to go before eventually joining the bloc.

Slovenia, the first of the new EU members to hold the bloc's six-month presidency, has been supportive pf Turkey's EU bid. It announced Ankara could open talks on two more policy sectors this month if technical preparations went well.

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