EU enlargement chief presses Turkey on Cyprus, Armenia

(ANKARA) - EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule urged Turkey Monday to open its ports to Cyprus under a trade pact with the bloc and to press on with peace efforts with Armenia.

"I had the opportunity to underline the importance the European Union attaches to the need for Turkey to fully implement the additional protocol... and normalise its relations with Cyprus," Fule told reporters after talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey has refused to implement the protocol to open its air and sea ports to EU-member Cyprus until the Union moves on its pledge to ease the international isolation of the island's breakaway Turkish-held north.

Ankara also refuses to acknowledge the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government until the island's division is resolved.

Turkey's stance prompted the EU in 2006 to freeze eight of the 35 chapters which candidate countries must successfully negotiate prior to membership.

Fule underlined that the problem would ease if peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since September 2008 led to a solution.

"We agree that a comprehensive settlement on Cyprus would be a historic breakthrough to the benefit of both Turkey and the EU," he said.

Davutoglu insisted his country's membership talks should not be overshadowed by "political problems that have no direct link to the EU process, such as Cyprus".

Fule also voiced support to reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia to overcome a century of hostility over allegations of an Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turks during World War I.

The two neighbours signed a historic deal in October to establish diplomatic ties and open their border, but the process has stalled amid mutual accusations of trying to modify the deal.

Turkey has been further angered by votes first in a US congressional panel and then in the Swedish parliament branding the killings as "genocide" -- a term Ankara categorically rejects.

"As someone who is coming from former Czechoslovakia, from the Czech Republic, I know that politicising your history is making reconciliation difficult," Fule said.

Turkey began EU membership talks in 2005, but has so far opened negotiations only in 12 policy chapters amid the row on Cyprus as well as opposition from some-EU members states to allow such a large and largely Muslim nation into the bloc.

On a two-day maiden trip to Turkey, Fule is to meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis later Monday before a meeting with businessmen in Istanbul Tuesday.