ROME - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Italy on Friday to attend the summit of Heads of State and Government of the European Union (EU) for the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference.
Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Deputy leader Saban Disli, Erdogan's advisors Omer Celik, Huseyin Besli, Egemen Bagis and his other advisors are accompanying Erdogan during his visit.
Turkish Ambassador in Rome Necati Utkan welcomed Erdogan at Pratica Di Mare Airport.
Erdogan will firstly meet with European Parliament President Pat Cox and then he will attend the conference in which Draft Constitutional Treaty will be discussed on Saturday.
Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and ten candidate countries besides EU member countries were invited to the conference. Erdogan will deliver a speech in the conference in which Turkey will attend as observer country.
Erdogan is expected to convey his views that ''religion'' should not be stressed in the new Draft Constitutional Treaty. Turkey will emphasize that if ''Christian'' expression is put into draft, discrimination will be made and the scope of union will be narrowed.
France, Britain, Portugal and Luxembourg, besides Turkey, demand individual freedom and freedom of religion and conscience to be stressed in the draft.
Meanwhile, Gul replied question of reporters on the plane and said regarding the issue of sending soldiers to Iraq that the details about the number of soldiers and time issue had not been discussed yet. He added that they would possibly determine a time and it would be important to show Turkey's will.
(GC-AÖ) 03.10.2003