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ISTANBUL, June 28: French President Jacques Chirac on Monday told US President George Bush to mind his own business after the latter called on the European Union to fix a date for Turkey to start EU entry talks.
The strongly worded attack came at the NATO summit. "If President Bush really said that the way I read it, well, not only did he go too far but he went into a domain which is not his own," Mr Chirac told reporters at the summit.
"It is like me trying to tell the United States how it should manage its relations with Mexico," he added. Meeting Turkish leaders before the NATO summit, Mr Bush hailed Turkey as the alliance's only Muslim member and said it should be rewarded with a firm start date for talks to join the European Union, a bloc it has been courting for decades.
The White House refused to back down after Chirac's remarks, pointing out that US policy on Turkey's possible accession to the EU was "well known and long standing". "We've made our views well known in public concerning the EU and Turkey," said a White House official.
European Union leaders are not due to decide on whether to open accession talks with Ankara until the end of the year after assessing its progress in human rights and other fields.
Even if the 25-member bloc decides to start talks, France and other EU states have warned that negotiations are likely to be complicated and go on for years. Mr Chirac reaffirmed his recent remarks that he backed the principle of Turkey joining the EU when it fulfilled entry criteria, adding that Turkey had a "historic European vocation".
French and US officials have been at pains to heal ties that were badly strained over the Iraq invasion, but major points of difference remain, with Paris notably reluctant to accept any significant role for NATO in Iraq.
UNITY OVER IRAQ: Nato leaders united on Monday to promise to help train Iraq's new army and to commit more troops to Afghanistan, but the deep divisions caused by the Iraq occupation were never far from view.
Tensions were high elsewhere in Istanbul, under heavy guard over fears of terror attacks, as left-wing protestors hurled petrol bombs and rocks at police, who responded with water cannon, tear gas and plastic bullets.
In a declaration of support after the surprise announcement that Iraq's US-led occupation coalition had transferred sovereignty to Baghdad two days early, Nato leaders also condemned the almost daily terrorist attacks.
"We are united in our support for the Iraqi people and offer full cooperation to the new sovereign interim government as it seeks to strengthen internal security and prepare the way to ... elections in 2005," they said.
"We deplore and call for an immediate end to all terrorist attacks in Iraq." The Alliance committed to boost by about a third the number of troops available to Afghanistan's interim government ahead of key elections there scheduled for September, the first since the fall of the Taliban regime.
"I think that a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan set such a vibrant example for others," US President George W. Bush said. The United States has long pressed for a wider Nato role in Iraq, and was also reportedly pressing to leave the door open for measures beyond merely training security forces in the future.
French President Jacques Chirac, who had learned of the Iraqi sovereignty handover only at the opening morning session between, welcomed the move but warned that it was not Nato's role to intervene. -Reuters / AFP
ME REFORM
NATO leaders agreed to offer a "dialogue" to countries of the broader Middle East region in an effort to help improve security and stability. The offer, the so-called "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative", is a plan to promote reform in the region but Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer insisted that it would not be forced upon countries. -AFP
