Turkey bristles at tough EU draft

By Gareth Jones and Paul Taylor

ANKARA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Turkey has bristled at a toughening of conditions for its bid to open European Union membership talks, including an explicit mention of torture, but Cyprus says the terms are not tough enough.

The latest draft of the final statement for next week's EU summit, due to decide on starting accession negotiations with Turkey, showed Ankara will have to prove it is implementing EU law rather than just enacting it to progress towards membership.

The text circulated by the Dutch EU presidency on Tuesday added a reference to the need for Turkey to settle disputes that could affect its accession bid via the International Court of Justice.

It retained a requirement that Turkey move towards tacitly recognising Cyprus as one of the 10 new EU member states despite Ankara's reluctance to do so. Nicosia said it wanted full recognition before talks start.

With the cherished prize of a start date for negotiations within his grasp, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had done all it could to ensure that EU leaders agree on December 17 to open talks, and its partners should now keep their word.

"Turkey has fulfilled all the political criteria," Erdogan told a rare joint news conference with opposition leader Deniz Baykal, convened to show political consensus on the EU question.

Asked about the mention of the word torture in the new draft, Erdogan said curtly: "Our sensitivity on torture and similar issues is well known."

Turkish media and officials complained the EU was piling on conditions as the deadline for the landmark decision approached.

"Second draft is tougher", said the liberal Radikal's front page headline.

"IRRITATING ELEMENTS"

Diplomats said Austria, one of the most uneasy EU states about admitting Turkey, was happier with the new draft because it removed a one-third threshold for the number of members required to request a suspension of the accession talks.

But a Turkish Foreign Ministry official complained at the inclusion of sensitive issues in the latest draft text.

"They (the EU) are playing a diplomatic game. There are irritating elements. We say these must not be written (in the final text)," the official said, adding that Turkey would try to have the conditions watered down before the summit.

He said Turkey had conveyed its concerns to the Dutch minister for Europe, Atzo Nicolai, in Ankara on Tuesday.

Turkey has pledged to eradicate torture and other human rights abuses in its drive to join the EU. It acknowledges that instances of torture persist but denies allegations by human rights groups that it is still widespread.

If the draft is adopted unchanged by the leaders, it will be the first time the EU has referred explicitly to torture in opening talks with a candidate country, reflecting persistent concern about Ankara's human rights record.

The draft spelled out in more detail the benchmarks Ankara will have to meet to open and conclude negotiations in each of the 31 policy areas into which EU law is divided, and made clear a separate framework would be established for each candidate.

Future candidates will have to show not only "legislative alignment", expected of past aspirants, but also a "satisfactory track record of implementation of the acquis (EU rules) as well as obligations deriving from contractual arrangements with the EU," it said.

The document left key issues such as the start date and the expected outcome of the negotiations for the summit to decide.

It made no concession to French demands that the EU spell out an explicit alternative to full membership but added a reference to six pieces of legislation which Turkey must adopt before starting talks.

Cyprus meanwhile held out for better terms for giving its agreement, saying tacit recognition was not good enough.

"We want Turkey to be able to help us to be positive in the process, but of course it is the decision of each individual member state to decide how its interests are safeguarded and how they are best served," Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said after talks which Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende described as "a frank exchange of thoughts".

The Dutch EU presidency has called on Turkey to grant de facto recognition to Cyprus through the extension of its 1963 association agreement to the 10 new EU member states.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 in reaction to an Greek-inspired coup in Nicosia and has kept 35,000 troops on the divided island ever since. Ankara and the Turkish Cypriots accepted a U.N. peace deal to reunify Cyprus before it joined the EU this year but the Greek Cypriots rejected it.