Talat to meet Rehn over direct trade today

TURKISH CYPRIOT leader Mehmet Ali Talat said yesterday he hoped an EU regulation to end the economic isolation of northern Cyprus would be agreed by mid-year but accused Greek Cypriots of seeking to undermine the move.

Talat said the government was insisting all trade between the north and the rest of the EU go through Greek Cypriot ports.

“This is not direct trade,” he told a news briefing in Brussels, where he is due to meet EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn today.

“We want the (European) Commission to be realistic,” he said. “The regulation should be workable. If they say you will use the southern ports, it will not work.”

Talat said the trade regulation should be adopted under an EU treaty article allowing for approval by a qualified majority of the 27 states, not by a unanimous vote that would allow it to be blocked by the Greek Cypriots.

Diplomats said the EU council’s legal service had concluded in 2004 that unanimity was required.

Talat said he believed Germany, in the EU chair until the end of June, favoured a “workable and practical solution”.

“We have an impression that the German presidency has the intention to finalise this regulation. So the adoption, we expect, will take place towards the end of the German presidency.”

EU foreign ministers agreed last month to revive moves to end the de facto embargo on Turkish-backed northern Cyprus, but diplomats said a fast opening of trade was unlikely.

Yesterday German presidency officials began briefing member states’ representatives on the subject and how the process would be carried out, reports from Brussels said. However they remained tight-lipped on what had transpired during the discussion citing the fact that publication of details could prove counterproductive.

Nicosia opposed direct trade and has said it will fight it on legal and political grounds.

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