Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-19-Speech-2-163"
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"en.20021119.2.2-163"2
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"Mr President, for 28 years, Berlin and Germany were divided. That is now history. For 28 years, Nicosia and Cyprus have been divided. Let that be history, and let it be so as soon as possible. Turkey must respect the UN resolutions and give its full support to efforts to reach a political solution regarding Cyprus. If the discussions fail, Cyprus must nonetheless be given the green light for membership in 2004 at the Copenhagen European Council this coming December.
It is important to make it clear to the new Islamophile Turkish Government that it must ignore the Turkish Cypriot threat of a permanent division of Cyprus if the southern part is brought into the EU before the discussions between Turkey and Greece are concluded. I assume it is perfectly clear to the Turks that their country can
embark upon membership negotiations if the occupying troops are not withdrawn from a future EU Member State, namely Cyprus. We are concerned here with the credibility of the EU and with the EU as a peace project. Initiatives on the part of the new Turkish Government and the UN on the Cyprus issue must be based upon this obvious insight.
In the text produced by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, I have put forward the view that Turkey’s democratic development, especially when it comes to the protection of ethnic and religious minorities, must be a prerequisite of increased financial pre-accession aid from the EU. In 1900, a quarter of Turkey’s population was Christian. A hundred years later, a thousandth of the population is Christian. That is a tragic expression of extensive assaults upon religious freedom and religious tolerance, particularly affecting Christian Syrians and Armenians.
I have also helped tighten up the appeals made by the European Parliament to the candidate countries when it comes, for example, to combating corruption, and I have also added an economic perspective. I should like to welcome the candidate countries to the EU."@en1
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