 |
No handshake photo for Talat at Brussels talks
Talat visited Buzek at his office in Brussels on Thursday evening. Members of the media were asked to leave the office at the beginning of the meeting and were later invited in the room when Buzek, Talat and the accompanying delegations took their seats.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Talat downplayed the incident, as he said that Buzek shook his hand in a very frank attitude and added that he was not aware of the fact that the media members left the office during the handshake, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Following his meeting with Buzek, Talat also had talks with Dutch Christian Democrat Ria Oomen-Ruijten, whose draft resolution on the progress report of Turkey was adopted last month by the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Oomen-Ruijten followed Buzek’s line and avoided pausing for a handshake photo with Talat, Anatolia reported.
“I don’t know if this has any particular meaning,” Talat told reporters when asked of the “handshakes-closed-to press” after his meeting with Oomen-Ruijten. “I mean, all in all, we met and you saw that we met. You are also reporting about it. Whether we have a photograph while shaking hands or not, I don’t believe that it has importance. One should not be formalist. Such formalism is done by Greek Cypriots, and we laugh at them. I believe we should not be engaging in the same kind of formalism.”
During his meetings with Buzek and Oomen-Ruijten, Talat voiced his uneasiness over the draft resolution on Turkey which called on Turkey to hand over a Turkish Cypriot town to the Greek Cypriots and to immediately begin the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the northern part of the island in order to contribute to ongoing reunification talks led by the United Nations between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders.
The European Parliament’s involvement in issues which are subject to comprehensive negotiations on the island will mean throwing cold water on the negotiation process, Talat warned, while speaking to reporters. The European Parliament will debate the draft resolution on Feb. 10, and voting will take place on Feb. 11.
During his meeting with Buzek, Talat stated that Turkish should be declared as an official language at the European Parliament in line with the 1960 Constitution of Cyprus, a joint parliamentary commission between the European Parliament and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) should be established and the KKTC should be directly represented at the European Parliament with two members as envisioned in a 2004 UN reunification plan drafted by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
In strongly worded remarks delivered in a speech at the European Policy Center on Friday, Talat warned the European Union and its bodies that their interventions into the Cyprus issue without sufficient knowledge on it was harming the ongoing negotiation process.
“External interventions should be constructive and neutral; they should be in a direction that encourages a solution. [They] should not be demanding only from one party,” Talat was quoted as saying by Anatolia, as he reiterated his criticism towards the draft resolution on Turkey.
“The EU is unfortunately not constructive on the Cyprus issue. EU institutions form ideas about the Cyprus issue without having detailed information.”
The EU, which let Greek Cyprus enter as a member in 2004 without resolving the Cyprus issue, “doesn’t have any right to play a political role” in the resolution of the Cyprus issue, Talat said. He underlined that if the EU is keen for a resolution, it should encourage the Greek Cypriots in this direction and ease the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| MELİH ARAT |  |
||
| Handmade | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
