PRAGUE, Aug 31 (AFP) - Turkey should be allowed to open membership talks with the European Union since isolating the country would not be in anyone`s interests, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Tuesday.
"I know that views differ on this but people need to think very carefully about the strategic implications of pushing Turkey away, of pushing Turkey to the east and to the south. I don`t think that`s in anybody`s interests in Europe," Straw told AFP during a visit to Prague.
The European Commission is due to announce on October 6 whether it would recommend opening EU accession negotiations with Turkey, whose membership aspirations have sparked controversy.
EU leaders are due to decide in December whether or not to begin accession negotiations with Ankara based on its progress in the area of individual liberties and human rights.
"We have long supported Turkey`s membership of the European Union. Turkey is a European nation and part of Europe`s history, it is entitled as a member of the Council of Europe and NATO to make an application for membership of the European Union and I hope a decision will be made in December for a start to negotiations," Straw said.
"The country has made very considerable progress particularly in the past two years towards meeting the necessary pre-conditions before negotiations can begin," he added.
Straw emphasised that the current debate was only about opening negotiations. "We are not talking about a finishing date or an accession date," he said.
Earlier, in a speech delivered to a meeting in Prague of Czech ambassadors, Straw linked opening negotiations with Turkey with the 1989 Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia that brought down the communist regime and led to "values of freedom, tolerance and democracy".
"There would be no better signal of Europe`s wish to support the spread of those universal values than a positive decision to open accession negotiations with Turkey this December," he told delegates.
In his speech Straw also called on the EU to better meet the challenges posed by the growing economies of the United States, China and India.
"If we want to maintain and increase Europe`s global economic standing, and with it our power and influence in the world, we need to boost growth in the European Union," he said.
"We need to create more flexible and liberal labour, product and capital markets. We must increase employment and spend more on research and development," he added.
Straw also called for a stronger partnership with the United States.
"Our task over the coming years must be to build a shared agenda with the US, where we can address the whole range of issues from terrorism, crime and proliferation to poverty, environmental degradation and disease which create the conditions in which threats to our security can thrive," he said.