President Mehmet Ali Talat
yesterday (11 December) received the Chamber of Industry’s Board of
Directors headed by Salih Tunar. During the meeting, President Talat said
that an economically strong country would be much stronger politically at
the negotiations table.
“In
order to achieve our political objectives and create better living
standards for the Turkish Cypriot people we should work towards building a
competitive and strong economy”, said President Talat.
Stressing
that the growing economy played an important role in politics, Talat
stated that the Turkish Cypriot people had better acknowledged the
importance of the economy and business people were trying to place special
importance on the economy.
The General Affairs and External Relations Council of the EU foreign
ministers during
a meeting in Brussels yesterday, has agreed on the EU Commission’s
recommendation of 29 November.
According
to the final communiqué of the Foreign Ministers Meeting, 8 Chapters out
of 35 of the accession negotiations between Turkey and the EU would be
suspended and no chapter would be provisionally closed until the
Commission verifies that Turkey has fulfilled its commitments related to
the Additional Protocol. In addition, the Foreign Ministers have decided
that the issue of the lifting of the isolations would be taken up in
January 2007.
The Foreign Ministers did not set a time-table for Turkey to
open its air and sea ports, however decided that observation reports would
be prepared in 2007,2008 and 2009 regarding this issue.
Following the meeting, EU Term President Finland’s Foreign
Minister Erkki Tuomioja, EU High Commissioner For Common Foreign and
Security Policy Javier Solana, EU Commissioner For Enlargement Olli Rehn
and EU Commissioner For External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner issued a
joint press meeting.
Referring to
Turkey’s
recent proposal envisaging to open one of its air and seaports to Greek
Cypriot vessels, Tuomioja said this was a positive but insufficient step
and added that Turkey should fully implement the Ankara Protocol.
Decisions taken by the EU Council of Ministers will be
submitted to the approval of the EU leaders who will meet on 14-15
December.
