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Austria raises the heat on Turkey EU entry
BRUSSELS - Austria set out impossible tough terms on Thursday for allowing the European Union to open accession talks with Turkey next week while EU ambassadors met to seek elusive agreement on a negotiating mandate.

In a barrage of newspaper interviews Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel demanded Ankara be offered an explicit alternative to full membership -- something Turkey vehemently rejects -- and said the EU also should open talks with Croatia immediately.

Diplomats said there was scant chance of envoys clinching a deal in light of Austria’s stance, and EU president Britain was poised to call an emergency foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on Sunday evening, hours before the Turkey talks are due to start on Monday. “It looks as if this will go down to the wire on Sunday night,” one diplomat said.

Schuessel, whose conservative Austrian People’s Party is fighting to avert defeat in regional elections in the province of Styria on Sunday, said European politicians should learn from the failed EU constitution votes in France and the Netherlands. “Democracy means you have to listen to the demos.”
What an odd concept for Europe.
“If Turkey does not fulfil the criteria, then Turkey should be bound in Europe by the strongest possible bond and if the union can’t absorb Turkey, then we are also looking for the strongest possible alternative bond,” he said. That wording was almost identical to the draft negotiating mandate proposed by the executive European Commission, but Schuessel said he wanted a more precise formula.

His comments reflected growing public opposition in western Europe to admitting the vast, poor, overwhelmingly Muslim country on the edge of Europe and the Middle East. Polls show 80 percent of his electorate opposed to Turkish entry.

Schuessel’s stance has isolated him in the 25-nation bloc, since EU leaders promised unanimously last December to open negotiations with Turkey on Oct. 3 if it met two key conditions which it has since fulfilled.

“It is blasphemy in the church of the European Union to go back on European Council (summit) conclusions,” one senior EU diplomat said.
'blasphemy'? What an odd word for a continent of unbelievers to use.
Austria takes over the EU presidency from Britain in January and could also jeopardise its relations with the United States, which strongly supports Turkey’s accession process.

Schuessel also linked the start of Turkey talks to an agreement to begin negotiations with Croatia, which have been stalled by Zagreb’s failure to cooperate with a U.N. tribunal in the hunt for fugitive war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina. “If we trust Turkey to make further progress, we should trust Croatia too ... It is in Europe’s best interest to start negotiations with Croatia immediately,” Schuessel told the Financial Times newspaper. “It is not fair to leave Croatia in an eternal waiting room. I don’t understand the logic at all,” he added.
Posted by: Steve White 2005-09-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=130917