EU-Turkish talks in balance as crunch week begins

BRUSSELS, Dec 11 (Reuters) EU foreign ministers met today for crucial talks on how to penalise Turkey for failing to normalise trade with Cyprus at the start of a week that could derail Ankara's troubled entry negotiations with the bloc.

EU capitals are split between those who would shed no tears if talks with the large, mainly Muslim nation collapsed, and others who say Europe must embrace a strategic partner to bridge the Western and Islamic worlds and secure a future energy hub.

Even before the meeting started, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said positions were too far apart for agreement to be reached on Monday, raising the spectre of a crisis summit of the 25-nation bloc on Turkey from Thursday.

But he told German ARD television: ''I am very confident that there will be an agreement at the end of this week.'' The executive European Commission is proposing a partial freeze on Turkey's membership negotiations to punish it for failing to open its ports and airports to traffic from new EU member Cyprus, as it is obliged to do under a customs union.

Cyprus, Greece and Austria said last week that was not enough and called for a new deadline for Ankara to end the ports stand-off, while Britain, Italy, Sweden and other supporters of Turkey said the EU executive's proposal was too harsh.

Turkey, which does not recognise the Greek Cypriot government, has said it will open its ports if the EU makes good on a 2004 pledge to end the economic isolation of Turkish Cypriot northern Cyprus, which Nicosia is blocking.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the decision had ''ominous potential'' to reshape his country's ties with the bloc.

''Pressuring Turkey to fulfil unilateral conditions while ignoring other obligations carries the risk of derailing the process,'' he wrote in the International Herald Tribune.

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