Spain hopes to speed up Turkey's EU talks
(MADRID) - Spain, which has assumed the rotating EU presidency, hopes to speed up Turkey's passage towards European Union membership, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said on Friday.
He said he hoped to open talks on another four of the 35 policy chapters which all EU candidate nations must successfully negotiate prior to membership.
Madrid has long backed Turkey's entry into the EU, a move opposed by heavyweights like France and Germany which have proposed a "privileged partnership" between the bloc and the mainly Muslim country rather than full EU membership.
"We have four chapters in mind and we hope to open them," Moratinos told reporters in Madrid.
The biggest hurdle to Turkey's EU membership is its lack of relations with Cyprus.
Eight chapters remain totally blocked due to Ankara's failure to open its borders to EU member Cyprus.
Cyprus itself has reserved the right to block six others.
The island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey occupied the north in response to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
"We are trying to get some progress in the talks" on Cyprus, said Moratinos.
"We know it's a very tricky issue but I hope the negotiations about the future of the island will present some results, some openings," he added.
Last month the 27 EU nations opened talks with Turkey on the policy chapter on environment, bringing the total of chapters opened to 12 since its EU accession talks began in 2005.
However so far only one of these has been successfully negotiated and closed.
In contrast Croatia, which opened formal EU accession talks at the same time as Turkey, has just a handful of chapters still to open and has already completed 17.
Spain will hold the EU presidency for the first six months of this year, making Moratinos' plan seem at least ambitious.
All the negotiators in the Cyprus talks, including Turkey and Greece "are aware of the timing factor," Moratinos stressed, referring to elections to be hold in April in the island's Turkish north, when partisan hardliners could win the day.
Last month, the island's President Demetris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed to intensify the United Nations-led peace process in efforts to reunify the long-divided island this year.
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