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Britain urges Turkey to open ports to Greek Cyprus as pledged
“I urge the Turkish government to honor the commitments that it has already made. We would like to see the ports opened, we’d like to see them making that commitment again and seeing action rather than just words,” said British Minister for Europe Chris Bryant.
Turkey’s compliance with its commitments will be discussed by EU heads of state at a summit in mid-December.
“We don’t want [Turkey’s accession process] to stop, we don’t want to slam the door shut. We think it is really important that Turkey’s process towards EU accession is maintained as a strong possibility,” Bryant told reporters in Nicosia.
Cyprus is a former British colony and Britain is a guarantor power of Cypriot sovereignty.
Earlier this month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the UK has offered half of the territory currently used to house British military bases in a bid to encourage Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reach a resolution on their ongoing negotiations for reunification of the divided island. The offer is similar to one made by the former colonial power in 2003 and would be conditional on a peace deal between the two sides. Britain has a strategically located air base on the Mediterranean island that would not be part of any deal. Britain is offering about 120 square kilometers of land to help seal a deal to reunify the divided nation.
Britain relinquished Cyprus in 1960 but retained two strategic pockets of territory -- on prime undeveloped real estate -- which account for about 3 percent of the island’s territory.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a telephone conversation on affairs concerning the EU with Brown, the Anatolia news agency reported late on Sunday, citing anonymous sources. The EU’s presidential election, Turkey-EU relations and the ongoing UN-led Cyprus negotiations were matters discussed by the two leaders during the telephone conversation which took place on Sunday afternoon upon Brown’s initiation, Anatolia said, without elaborating.
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