24 March 2004

1. "Verheugen sees Turkey's accession may require reform within EU", EU Enlargement Commissioner says it would be difficult for the EU to back-pedal on Turkey's membership after this point.

2. "Turkey 'key to EU-Islam relationship'", the treatment of Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union will be an "acid test" of Europe's ability to counter the myth it is doomed to conflict with Islam, Jack Straw, the UK foreign secretary, said on Tuesday.

3. "Any use of torture should bar Turkey from the EU: Danish FM", Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller warned Turkey on Tuesday that any use of torture would bar it from ever joining the European Union.

4. "Cyprus Talks Critical as Greece, Turkey Step In", Greece and Turkey, who several times come to the brink of war over Cyprus, were due enter a week of high-pressure talks on Wednesday aimed at reuniting the island before it joins the EU on May 1.

5. "Kurds demand constitutional, international guarantees in new Iraq", Kurds will not accept being part of a new Iraq without constitutional and international guarantees for their rights, a Kurdish member of the US-appointed interim Governing Council told AFP on Tuesday.

6. "Kurds vent deep anger with Syrians", a larger-than-life statue of the late president, Hafez al-Assad, which once towered over a central traffic circle here, stands hidden beneath a blue and red striped canvas tarpaulin to hide the fact that anti-government protesters knocked off its head, residents say.

1. - Turkish Daily News - "Verheugen sees Turkey's accession may require reform within EU":

EU Enlargement Commissioner says it would be difficult for the EU to back-pedal on Turkey's membership after this point

ANKARA / 24 March 2004

European Commissioner for Enlargement Guenter Verheugen admitted that both the accession process and integration of Turkey into the European Union would be costly to the bloc, noting the EU may have to carry out financial reforms within itself.

"We cannot undertake negotiations that will put us in financial difficulties. We don't have a goose laying golden eggs. The EU may have to undertake reforms when big expenditures are in question. In fact, this could be our only alternative," the commissioner said in an interview with the Austrian die Presse newspaper.

He emphasized that Turkey had a population equivalent to the ten soon to be member countries, adding it was impossible to integrate Turkey into the EU without carrying out financial reforms.

The financial burden Turkey would bring to the Union has long been an issue of debate within the EU.

Many in the EU fear their wealthy bloc won't be able to absorb a country of Turkey's scale. They also fret over the costs of extending the EU's generous farm subsidies and regional aid programs to Turkey where the average incomes are very low.
No turning back on membership pledge

Turkey expects to get the go-ahead to start accession talks in a December 2004 summit of EU leaders. Verheugen's Commission will issue a critical progress report in autumn on whether Turkey has fulfilled membership criteria.

Verheugen said the achievements of Turkey within the last two years have been more than those in its 80 years-long history, adding, however, there were still deficiencies concerning "freedom of religion, implementation of reforms and balance of power between the military and civil authorities."

Asked about the possibility of the EU saying no to Turkey, Verheugen said, "The EU has been telling Turkey for forty years that if the necessary criteria are met, it can become an EU member. I think that to change this policy without risking reform process in Turkey, the stability of that country and the EU's respectability in the international arena, would be, though not impossible, very difficult."

2. - The Financial Times - "Turkey 'key to EU-Islam relationship'":

LONDON / 23 March 2004 / by By Jean Eaglesham

The treatment of Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union will be an "acid test" of Europe's ability to counter the myth it is doomed to conflict with Islam, Jack Straw, the UK foreign secretary, said on Tuesday.

In a wide-ranging speech on terrorism ahead of Wednesday's summit of European leaders, Mr Straw said Europe needed to show "unity and purpose" following the Madrid bombings, and to demonstrate its values were shared with moderate Muslim countries.

He also called on Europe to accelerate moves to co-operate on security and law enforcement, threatening to "name and shame" countries that delayed implementing counter-terrorism measures such as the European arrest warrant.

Speaking in Copenhagen, Mr Straw issued a thinly-veiled attack on the threats by the socialist winners of the recent Spanish general election to pull troops out of Iraq. Warning there was a "real risk that we let the terrorists spread division", he claimed disengagement from Iraq would simply play into the hands of al-Qaeda.

"The argument that there is some kind of opt-out from the terrorists' target list to be gained by adopting a non-engaged foreign policy is not only false but profoundly dangerous," Mr Straw said.

While there were "of course" differences with the US, as well as within Europe, a united transatlantic alliance was the most effective weapon against the divisions terrorists sought to create, Mr Straw said.

Such an alliance needed to stress that Europe and America did not have a monopoly on the values of pluralism and tolerance.

The EU should show such values were not purely "Judaeo-Christian" by ensuring Turkey's application for accession was treated "without fear or favour", Mr Straw said. "We must fulfil our engagements to Turkey . . . we must be clear that Turkey will be treated as any other EU candidate."

Britain's strong support for Turkey's bid to join the EU comes amid evidence of mounting animosity within the country towards the US foreign policies that the UK has so strongly supported. A survey published this week by the Pew Research Center found that almost a third of Turks believed suicide attacks against Americans and other westerners in Iraq were justified.

But Mr Straw said the EU would "benefit greatly from integrating a country with such enormous potential - a key Nato ally at the intersection of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus".

Europe also needed to move forward with the counter-terrorist measures agreed in the wake of September 11, Mr Straw said.

Monday's meeting of EU foreign ministers agreed a deadline of June 30 for implementing proposals for intelligence and security co-operation that were originally due to be in force by the start of this year.

Mr Straw criticised as "frankly not good enough" the "back-markers" who had yet to act on the measures. He declined to identify which member states were lagging behind but told the BBC that those countries that missed the June 30 deadline would be publicly named.

3. - AFP - "Any use of torture should bar Turkey from the EU: Danish FM":

23 March 2004

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller warned Turkey on Tuesday that any use of torture would bar it from ever joining the European Union.

"If there is torture, there will be no negotiations or membership of the European Union," Moeller told reporters following a meeting with his British counterpart Jack Straw in Copenhagen.

He conceded however that "we have a problem at the doorstep of Europe: it is better to have Turkey as a part of the European family than (as) an enemy of the European family."

Human rights organizations and the International Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims (IRCT) have repeatedly criticized Turkey's use of torture, and Amnesty International reported in February that Turkish security forces continue to use torture, often with impunity.

While Straw agreed that Turkey should be required to meet the general criteria for EU membership, called the Copenhagen criteria, he argued the benefits of allowing Turkey to join the Union.

"Turkey is of huge strategic importance. We can either draw Turkey into the European family or we can push it away. There is no half and half solution," he told reporters.

"If we believe, as I strongly do, that Europe's strength lies not in a Judaeo-Christian club but in a diversity of traditions underpinned by common and universal values, then we must fulfill our engagements to Turkey," he said in a speech at a seminar in Copenhagen on Tuesday entitled "Global challenges to the EU".

"We have recognized Turkey as a candidate for membership. Now we must be clear that Turkey will be treated as any other EU candidate, without fear or favour," he added.

4. - Reuters - "Cyprus Talks Critical as Greece, Turkey Step In":

BUERGENSTOCK / 24 March 2004 / by Michele Kambas

Greece and Turkey, who several times come to the brink of war over Cyprus, were due enter a week of high-pressure talks on Wednesday aimed at reuniting the island before it joins the EU on May 1.

With little time before European Union enlargement, mediators hope Athens and Ankara will succeed where others have failed to convince their ethnic Cypriot cousins to sign up to a power-sharing United Nations blueprint.

The scene of either a historic accord or a spectacular failure is the mountain resort of Buergenstock, an isolated complex of hotels on the shores of Lake Lucerne.

Talks are being shifted to Switzerland after almost four weeks of bilateral negotiations between Cypriots failed.

"A change of scene and the involvement of other parties will give this process a new dynamic," a European diplomat said.

It was the intervention of Greece and Turkey that broke deadlock between Greek and Turkish Cypriots over a power-sharing constitution for Cypriot independence from Britain in 1960.

This time the stakes may be higher for both countries. Failure would mean an already isolated northern Cyprus would forego the benefits of the EU. Turkey, the only state to recognize northern Cyprus, could see its own EU hopes blighted. For Greeks it could seal a painful division.

Near-blizzard conditions welcomed delegations to the snowbound and heavily guarded resort on Tuesday.

A Greek delegation was due to arrive on Wednesday. Turkish and Greek Prime Ministers Tayyip Erdogan and Costas Karamanlis will arrive on March 29 and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is also expected.

Talks were to start on Wednesday afternoon, but Thursday and Friday were apparently clear as key players were due in Brussels for an EU summit, leaving essentially only the weekend for serious bargaining.

MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN

Asked whether time was enough to resolve differences a Greek Cypriot official told Reuters: "Draw your own conclusions ...miracles can happen."

The United Nations plan proposes broad autonomy for both communities in their respective zones.

Problem areas include the precise territorial surrender Turkish Cypriots are asked to make and how free Greeks and Turks should be to return to homes they lost in the 1974 partition.

Under a U.N. talks roadmap, if Greece and Turkey fail to reach an accord Annan can fill in any unresolved issues and send it to a referendum on both sides of the island on April 20.

The two NATO allies have to also agree to scaling down their troop levels on the island, divided since a Turkish invasion in 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece.

5. - AFP - "Kurds demand constitutional, international guarantees in new Iraq":

SULEIMANIYA 23 March 2004

Kurds will not accept being part of a new Iraq without constitutional and international guarantees for their rights, a Kurdish member of the US-appointed interim Governing Council told AFP on Tuesday.

"We will not enter a unified Iraq another time without constitutional and international guarantees," said council member Mahmud Othman.

"And in case of violations of the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people in deciding their fate we will resort to the United Nations," he said.

He made his comments after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a main leader of the Shiite Muslim majority, rejected the newly-drafted transitional constitution, fearing the document would give Kurdish and Sunni Muslim communities de facto veto rights.

The Kurdish minority in Iraq, harshly repressed under the regime of Saddam Hussein who was deposed by a US-led war last year, is hoping to gain reinforced autonomy under the new Iraq.

Othman proposed "holding legislative elections in Kurdistan before holding general elections in Iraq (due by end of January 31, 2005) in order to unify the administrations in Arbil and Suleimaniya."

Unifying Kurdish regions would "help the Kurds regain lost Kurdish lands", he said, adding: "And it will not be easy to regain Kurdish regions, including Kirkuk, Sinjar, Khanaqeen..."

Arbil and Suleimaniya are separate Kurdish regions, controlled respectively by the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for the past decade.

Othman also said that "the US administration is serious about handing over sovereignty to Iraq on time at the end of June because the current US administration is facing elections at home.

"They will probably use their independence day (July 4) to return sovereignty to the Iraqis," he added.

6. - The New York Times - "Kurds vent deep anger with Syrians":

QAMISHLY / 24 March 2004 / by Neil MacFarquhar

A larger-than-life statue of the late president, Hafez al-Assad, which once towered over a central traffic circle here, stands hidden beneath a blue and red striped canvas tarpaulin to hide the fact that anti-government protesters knocked off its head, residents say.

In the nearby town of Malkiya, two gilded plaster busts of Assad and his son, President Bashar Assad, the main decor inside a local culture center, were also decapitated and the building torched.

Someone scrawled "Kurdistan" in bright red spray paint across an interior wall of the gutted water authority building there, too.

Violent anti-government protests by Kurds demanding minority rights that have erupted over several days this month have left in their wake a toll of blackened government buildings, schools, grain silos and vehicles across a wide swath of northern Syria.

"What happened did not come out of a void," says Bishar Ahmed, a 30-year-old Kurd whose cramped stationary shop sits next to a cluster of blackened official buildings in Malkiya.

"The pressure has been building for nearly 50 years," Ahmed said. "They consider us foreigners, we have no rights as citizens."

Clashes between soccer fans from rival teams March 11 triggered the sudden spate of violence, which officially left 25 people dead and dozens wounded. But the tinderbox of raw emotions that the riots laid bare universally shocked Syrians and left government officials painting a sinister picture of foreign-inspired plots to partition the country.

Local officials suggest that the Kurds were motivated by agent provocateurs who infiltrated from Iraq.

"They came from outside the country, from the east, and they have been paid in U.S. dollars supplied by Bremer and his gang," said Ahmed Al-Salah, an employee of a torched government feed storage warehouse in Qamishly, 640 kilometers, or 400 miles, northeast of Damascus. He was referring to L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the chief American administrator in Iraq.

For their part, Kurdish residents claim the government responded to what they call peaceful protests with massive violence as an excuse to say Syria remains far too unstable to introduce the kind of democratic reforms that are helping their brethren in Iraq.

"We want democracy like the others," said Hoshiar Abdelrahman, another young shopkeeper in Malkiya, 100 kilometers east of Qamishly. "The whole world is like one big ball now, nothing can be hidden from us."

After the first few demonstrators were killed, Kurdish areas throughout the region were bubbling over with years of repressed grievances, locals say. In Malkiya, for example, a town of one and two-story buildings, the tide of angry voices at the Saturday market eventually led to a mass march on city hall. As the crowd approached, security officers opened fire, killing a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old man, and wounding tens of others, residents said.

The government version is that the Kurds starting torching buildings first and the government fired on them to protect its property.

"If we were attacked by an Israel missile we would respond with all means possible," said Salim Kabul, the governor of Hassakeh province. "So what do you expect when we are attacked from inside?"

In notably abbreviated remarks to visiting reporters, the governor put the death toll in his province at 20 dead, including 14 Kurds and six Arabs, among them two policemen. Kurds say they suspect the toll is far higher, but they don't know how many because scores of young men have been detained.

The grievances of some of the roughly 2 million Kurds among the 17 million Syrians are etched onto the landscape here. Fields of wheat stretch to the horizon, interrupted periodically by gigantic, praying-mantis like oil pumps and cramped mud brick villages.

The area produces much of the country's oil as well as two of its prime agricultural products - wheat and cotton, residents say, and yet they get little in the way of development money. Instead they complain that for the past four decades the government has been slowly moving more and more Arabs into the area, trying to create a belt about 16 kilometers wide and some 265 kilometers long to sever them from their ethnic kin in Iraq and Turkey.

Village and even mountain names have been Arabized and the Kurdish language banned, although most families teach it at home. Worse, thousands upon thousands of Kurds are denied citizenship. (Kurdish groups say more than 200,000; the government says 100,000.)

"My grandfather was born here, yet my father is considered a foreigner, I am a foreigner and my three-year-old son has no nationality," said Abdelrahman, the shopkeeper.

He cannot register his son, his car or his shop in his name, he said, and both he and his wife's identification cards read "Single" because their marriage is not recognized.