Ankara Expects Entry Talks To Start During Britain's E.U. Term Presidency

ANKARA - Ankara expects full membership negotiations with the European Union (EU) to start in July 2005 when Britain will take over term presidency.
Diplomatic sources said on Wednesday that an important turning point in process of opening of accession talks had been passed after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) had closed monitoring procedure for Turkey the day before and relations between Turkey and the EU would go through an intense period in coming months.
Noting that it would be important for the process if the EU Commission's Progress Report on Turkey in October would be ''positive'', which was Turkey's expectation, sources said that the commission would only make recommendation and the decision on date of opening entry talks was expected to be made at the EU summit in December.
Stating that a decision on opening of accession talks with Turkey in July 2005 was expected to be made at the EU summit in Brussels in December, sources said that term presidency of Luxembourg would be a period of preparation for Turkey.
Recalling that the ''screening process'' imposed on candidate countries after date of negotiations was set, lasted 4-5 months, sources said that differences between the Turkish and EU regulations would be analyzed and steps to remove those differences would be determined during that period.
One of those steps was transformation of Turkey's Secretariat General for the EU into ministry or undersecretary's office responsible for the EU, sources said and added that such a step was planned as Turkey's Secretariat General for the EU could not be sufficient after start of negotiations.
Meanwhile, Turkey on June 15 sent its contribution to the Progress Report which is going to be announced in October. The contribution report includes detailed presentation of reforms that were made to fulfil the Copenhagen criteria to have the Progress Report issued in an objective way and in line with Turkey's expectations.
Ankara will send the updated version of this report to the EU on September 15.
(MS-AÖ) 23.06.2004