Temperature rises in debate on expansion

Date: 13/03/1997

By Mark Turner

WITH only three months to go before the scheduled end of the Intergovernmental Conference and nine before formal talks on enlargement are due to begin, an informal meeting of foreign ministers this weekend will demonstrate just how tumultuous the Union's external relations dossier can be.

Nominally a stock-take of progress towards EU expansion, the meeting could prove to be a crucial step on the road towards allowing up to 12 new members into the Union, even though it will not produce any firm conclusions.

Top of the agenda will be the relationship between EU enlargement and the officially separate, but clearly linked, expansion of NATO. The future of Cyprus will also feature highly during a period of increased sensitivity and international interest in the island.

As NATO prepares to open the door to its first central European members this summer in Madrid, the political temperature in the transition states of central and eastern Europe is rising fast.

Although the East's military integration with the West has been long separated from economic and political union in official speeches, there is no escaping the fact that, to eastern populations, they represent two sides of the same coin.

The Union's decision on whether or not to erect a de facto political wall along the 30th longitude, cutting off Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, could be one of the most profound foreign policy decisions of the new millennium - just as important as any US decision in the military field.

Consequently, it is proving increasingly difficult for EU leaders to stifle debate on this issue and the Dutch presidency feels the time has come to lay some cards on the table.

Ministers face two major considerations. The first is Russian anger at the steady creep of western military might towards its borders and the destabilisation that might cause.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin has emerged from his recent illness with all guns blazing against NATO expansion, and reaching a compromise will be very difficult indeed.

But - at least according to Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, speaking after the EU-Russia summit on 3 March - Moscow has no overtly parallel fears about Union enlargement, whatever the Baltic applicants might fear.

Whether that lack of concern will persist as the Union strengthens its foreign policy arm is unclear, but in the meantime, EU-Turkish relations are a more immediate problem.

Although Ankara is now playing down its earlier threat to veto NATO expansion should the EU continue to spurn it, the implicit warning is still there. “The Parliament will have to vote on this and is likely to take a hard line,” said one Turkish diplomat.

European Christian Democrats reacted to such posturing with surprising vehemence last week. Leaders including German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar galvanised the world's media by announcing that Turkey would never join the Union - in the words of ex-Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens, “either in the short term or long”.

“One idea that dominated this meeting was a commitment not to accept any blackmail whatsoever,” Portuguese opposition leader Marcelo Reblo de Sousa told journalists afterwards.

Although most commentators had, in fact, tacitly already written off Turkey's chances, the bluntness of this statement caused a furore amongst the country's leading intelligentsia. The snub to the West's most important Arab ally was particularly galling coming from an overtly Christian club, marking the EU's clearest challenge to Ankara since the Commission said it was neither economically nor politically ready for membership in 1989.

The move angered both Muslims, who felt rejected on religious grounds, and secularists, who felt betrayed after years of support for the West.

By rejecting Turkey, Kohl and friends also defied US diplomats, who are still lobbying vigorously for Turkish membership of the Union.

Their statement has, in addition, sown confusion, given the decision last month by most EU leaders (including Kohl) that talks on Cypriot accession should involve Turkish leaders on the island.

That move enraged Greece and Cyprus' internationally recognised government, which argued that giving Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash an implicit seal of EU approval went against everything the United Nations had decided.

But as tensions remain high on the island - not least over Russia's supply of anti-aircraft missiles to the southern half - some kind of compromise is looking more essential.

“It is about time someone took a good long look at the Cyprus dossier. Within a few years, we could be in effect letting Turkey into the Union through a back door,” warned a European Parliament expert on enlargement.

Given the growing uncertainty these events are sowing, the choice of subject-matter for the Apeldoorn meeting has been welcomed by those looking for some firm direction. “It is time the Council set some clear guidelines on how to proceed,” said the Parliament expert.