Erdogan Has Bilateral Meetings With His Counterparts In Italy

MILAN - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had bilateral meetings with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schuessel in Italy where he attended Ambrosetti Forum.
Erdogan also met with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and Adnan Pacaci, a member of the interim governing council in Iraq.
State Minister Ali Babacan, Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan, deputies Egemen Bagis and Omer Celik, Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy leader Nazim Ekren, Foreign Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Volkan Bozkir, Erdogan's foreign affairs adviser Ender Aras also attended Erdogan's meetings.
Erdogan talked to Aznar during the luncheon. Aznar told Erdogan that Spain would continue to support Turkey's European Union (EU) membership process.
Following his meeting with Erdogan, Austrian Prime Minister Schuessel told reporters that Erdogan paid a visit to Austria last July and that they had established a good communication during that visit.
Schuessel stated that there were not any serious problems between two countries but there were some small problems in visa and taxation which were not unsolvable problems.
They took up Iraq issue in their meeting, Schuessel said.
Schuessel quoted Erdogan as saying that General Jones and Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok met the previous day but no concrete military decision was taken. He also quoted Erdogan as saying that a political decision could not be taken since a military decision was not made.
Austrian Prime Minister Schuessel also quoted Erdogan as saying that there were some military risks and they were evaluating them. Erdogan also told Schuessel in their meeting that a United Nations (U.N.) resolution would ease Turkey's decision.
Asked what EU countries thought about dispatch of soldiers to Iraq, Schuessel said that everybody was free there and there were EU countries who sent units to Iraq and who opposed to that.
Schuessel added that they would support every effort which could help a settlement in Iraq.
Replying to a question about their view on Turkey's steps towards EU, Schuessel said that Turkey took very important steps and he saw that Turkey had recorded a big progress so far.
Amr Moussa asked Erdogan about Turkey's sending soldiers to Iraq. Erdogan said, ''we are not going there for war, we want to go there for the peace of Iraqi people. We want to be in a different region than Americans when we go there. If Iraqi people want, we go there. We take our decision following the reports of our delegation which came from the region.''
When Amr Moussa asked the view of Erdogan about the activities for a more active role of U.N. in Iraq issue, Erdogan said that this would ease the work of Turkey and shorten the decision-making process.
Turkey's EU membership was taken up during Erdogan-Raffarin meeting. Raffarin told Erdogan that Turkey already knew the supportive attitude of Chirac and they did not have anything else to add and they were supporting those negotiations. Erdogan asked Armenian policy to Raffarin and Raffarin said that the decision about Armenian issue were taken when he was in the opposition party and he voted against the issue in that period.
Raffarin told Erdogan that a secular and democratic Turkey would become a member of EU.
(GC-BRC) 07.09.2003