EU summit a "success," but not 100 percent: Erdogan

BRUSSELS, Dec 17 (AFP) - An EU summit that decided Friday to start membership talks with Turkey was "a success", but it would be wrong to call it a 100 percent success, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
"We did not obtain all that we wanted 100 percent", Erdogan told a news conference, "but we can say that it was a success."
Erdogan said he was particularly pleased that the target of full membership for his country at the end of talks scheduled to begin in October 2005 was inscribed in the summit's conclusions "unambiguously."
"We have reached a point where Turkey is rewarded for 41 years of efforts," he said, referring to the fist association agreement signed between Turkey and the EU's predecessor, the European Economic Community, in 1963.
Erdogan said he was pleased that one of his favored projects, a "reconciliation of civilizations between Christianity and Islam," now rested on a "concrete base."

12/17/2004 17:49 GMT - AFP