Copenhagen, 12/12/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a press conference just before the opening of the meeting of the European Council, Chairman Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared he was optimistic regarding the conclusion of accession negotiations with the ten candidate countries, but he also sent out a warning to them, stating that the financial amount on the table would be the maximum (see next page).
In Copenhagen on Thursday, the Turkish authorities launched a last major diplomatic offensive to convince the Fifteen to set a more favourable timetable for Turkey's accession to the EU. The leader of the party in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Abdullah Gul met Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis Thursday morning and, in the afternoon, the British Head of Government, Tony Blair and Italian Silvio Berlusconi, as well as the President of the European Council who was to present a text in the evening to his counterparts on Turkey. A trilateral meting with President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is also scheduled for Friday. The Turkish delegation's objective was to obtain an improved timetable for opening negotiations, with a final decision being taken before the arrival of new Member States, therefore under the Italian Presidency or later in March 2004. In order to achieve this, Turkey has put the arrangement on ESPD missions and NATO capability, as well as the commitment on the Cypriot issue, in the balance. Discussions took place in parallel with the USA Special Envoy for Cyprus, Thomas Weston, NATO representative, Alvaro de Soto and representatives from the two Cypriot communities, President Glafko Clerides for the Cypriot Republic and the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the TRNC, Tahsin Ertugruloglu, in view of reaching an agreement on the NATO peace plan principles with a negotiations calendar for re-unification of the island that is compatible with the accession timetable. The signature of the agreement was improbable due to the absence of the Turkish Cypriot leader who is in hospital in Istanbul but a firm political commitment on the exact timetable would suffice, according to some diplomatic sources. This would help conciliation on the balance sheet on the implementation of reforms in Turkey and the opening of negotiations in the second half of 2004 but in no way before the European elections.
At the end of the EPP Summit, Jean-Pierre Raffarin said that France, Italy, Spain and Portugal was in favour of the indication of a date to Turkey, whereas Edmund Stoiber had great reservations and that Luxembourg and the Netherlands had a less radical stance; reserved but less than the CDU-CSU.