Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is scheduled to travel to Austria on Wednesday, where he will take part in the EU Heads of State and Government Summit on 11 May. He will attend as a special guest of Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schüssel, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency. Erdoğan will also participate in the EU-Latin America Summit and hold a bilateral meeting with Schüssel. In a lighter moment, he and Turkish national soccer coach Fatih Terim will join a football match pitting EU member states against Latin American nations.
Erdoğan will then travel to Indonesia on 12 May to join the Fifth Summit of the Developing-8 (D-8) group on 13 May, chaired by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Participants will include the presidents of Iran and Nigeria, the prime ministers of Malaysia and Pakistan, and the foreign ministers of Egypt and Bangladesh.
The D-8, formally established at an Istanbul summit on 15 June 1997, aims to strengthen trade, improve living standards, and expand the role of developing nations in the global economy. Previous summits were held in Istanbul, Dhaka, Cairo, and Tehran. At the Bali gathering, leaders are expected to sign a preferential trade agreement, a customs cooperation accord, and the Bali Statement.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.