ATHENS, Dec 18 (AFP) - The Greek government on Saturday hailed the agreement to grant Turkey a start date for EU entry talks as an important milestone towards normalising relations between Athens and Ankara.
"It was a particularly important success for our country... which followed long, complicated and difficult negotiations. The results are highly satisfactory," Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis told a press conference.
"Our strategy is to ensure security and stability in the region, and any country in the region joining the European Union contributes to that goal."
Following the deal reached in Brussels, "a new chapter is opening for the normalisation of relations between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus," he added.
Molyviatis stressed however the agreement for talks to start next October was "not a blank cheque" and that Turkey would be "under scrutiny from the 25 EU members, including Grece and Cyprus, for a period of at least 10 years."
Although allies in NATO, Turkey and Greece have long been at loggerheads over territorial rights in the Aegean, as well as over the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
Molyviatis said Athens had won the battle for the final text of the agreement to mention "Turkey's commitment to respect good neighbourly relations with states on its borders."
He also voiced hope that the accord would help create the right conditions for a settlement of the Cypriot question.
"I cannot say how a relaunch could take place, but I think it would be based on (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan's blueprint and would take into account the fact that Cyprus is now a member of the EU," he said.
Greek President Costas Stephanopoulos, however, said he regretted that the European Union had been forced to bargain with Turkey and had not been able to "impose its conditions, its culture and its values of democracy and liberty."
Greek newspapers gave front page coverage to the EU decision, but were sceptical about a Turkish compromise on recognising the government of Cyprus.
Right-wing, pro-government newspapers such as Eleftheros Typos and Kathimerini broadly interpreted the deal as amounting to "de facto recognition" of the Greek Cypriot government.
But opposition newspapers largely described the compromise as a defeat for Greek negotiatiors.
"The Europeans bowed to Turkish blackmail" over Cyprus, charged the left-wing Ethnos paper, which accused the EU of "abandoning" Cyprus with the complicity of the Greek government.
The communist Rizospastis described the deal as a "marriage of convenience," stressing it did not imply a formal recognition of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, Eleftheros Typos slammed the brinksmanship of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan during the talks.
"The endless bargaining (from Turkey) has shown European leaders the country they will have to face, a country which has great trouble adapting to European behaviour," it commented.
Turkey had reportedly threatened to walk out of Friday's summit if the condition on recognising Cyprus was not diluted, and Erdogan has asserted that the final deal does not amount to formal recognition of Cyprus.
Ankara finally agreed to sign a protocol updating its 1963 association agreement with what was then the European Economic Community to cover the 10 new members, including Cyprus, that joined the EU on May 1.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkish troops occupied the northern third of the island in response to a coup engineered by the then-ruling military junta in Athens to unite the country with Greece.
Only the Greek-Cypriot south of the island joined the EU on May 1, after Greek Cypriots rejected a UN blueprint to reunify Cyprus.

12/18/2004 15:54 GMT - AFP