Quote:
HELSINKI (Reuters) - The European Union's enlargement chief was quoted on Thursday as saying the EU may suspend membership negotiations with Turkey completely over its refusal to move on Cyprus.
"There is that possibility. I hope that we don't have to resort to that, but we have no reason not to use it if there are grounds for that," Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told the Finnish news agency STT, when asked if the EU might stop talks.
He gave the interview on Wednesday when EU ambassadors decided for the first time to move forward faster in accession talks with Croatia than with Turkey because of Ankara's refusal to open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus.
"I am a realist and that is why I have tried to warn about a possible collision in negotiations, unless Turkey holds to its commitments on Cyprus and speeds up its reforms," he was quoted as saying.
The Turkish lira weakened briefly on the news, traders said, but the reaction was limited and it quickly recovered to stand at 1.6065 to the dollar, 0.4 percent stronger on the day.
Turkey, which invaded Cyprus in 1974 in response to a short-lived coup engineered by Greece's then ruling military junta, does not recognise the Greek Cypriot Nicosia government.
The EU says Turkey must open its ports and airports to Cypriot traffic under an agreement signed last year extending its customs union to the 10 new EU member states, including Cyprus.
The EU agreed on Wednesday to open detailed negotiations with both Turkey and Croatia on competition policy but only with Zagreb on customs, because the European Commission has not finished screening the compatibility of Turkish legislation with EU law due to the Cyprus issue.
It was the first time the EU had made Turkey wait in the talks because of its stance over Cyprus, reaffirmed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week.
The 25-nation bloc concluded the first detailed negotiations with both candidates earlier this month on the easiest of the 35 "chapters" into which EU law is divided -- science and research.
full article... http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=948362006
Why aren't the airports and sea ports open in the North?
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Turkish Troops Out of Cyprus
