Handshakes in Spain
Prime Minister Costas Simitis and Foreign Minister George Papandreou met briefly with their Turkish counterparts on the fringes of the EU summit in Barcelona yesterday, on a day in which Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit shook hands for the first time with Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides. Ecevit, who ordered the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and Clerides, were in Barcelona because Cyprus is among the next wave of countries that will join the EU and Turkey is a candidate for eventual membership. «I greeted Mr Clerides because this was the first time I met him. We did not discuss politics, it was a social contact,» Ecevit said. He hastened to add that «politics is Mr (Rauf) Denktash’s concern,» a reference to the Turkish-Cypriot leader with whom Clerides is in the process of negotiating a settlement to the Cyprus problem. Ecevit told Turkish reporters that he had noticed in Barcelona the positive atmosphere due to the resumption of the UN-mediated talks between Clerides and Denktash, saying that many European leaders had expressed satisfaction with this. But, according to the Athens News Agency, Ecevit repeated the demand that has stymied previous rounds of negotiations. «The Cypriot reality has to be recognized – the existence of two separate states,» he said. Ecevit also said that he had shaken hands with Simitis as well. The Greek prime minister, in a news conference with Greek reporters, elaborated that he had told Ecevit that progress had to be made on the Cyprus issue and in delineating the continental shelf in the Aegean. The latter is the only Greek-Turkish issue which Athens recognizes, and has called for it to be dealt with by the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Papandreou met briefly with his Turkish counterpart, Ismail Cem, to discuss the talks that were held on Tuesday by senior diplomats of their two ministries in Ankara. The contact aimed to explore a framework for Greece and Turkey to discuss differences. The two ministers also discussed the possibility of cooperating on what Papandreou called the «strategically important» project to build a pipeline delivering Iranian gas through Turkey to Greece. Simitis noted that «there is no technocratic cooperation on such a scale that does not have a political dimension.» He said that the issue had been discussed in his meeting with Iranian President Mohammed Khatami in Athens on Wednesday. EU leaders were to discuss the issue of the nascent European defense force late last night. Greece has found itself isolated in its opposition to Turkey, a NATO member, having a say in how the force will be used even though it is not an EU member. Simitis was expected to spell out what kind of solution Athens could accept.
