WASHINGTON, Oct 4: The United States helped rescue Turkey’s bid to join the EU on Monday in an unusual intervention in European affairs prompted in part by American concern the bloc was interfering in NATO.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to prod him to accept negotiating terms with the EU and begin accession talks.

Turkey acquiesced at the eleventh hour after the superpower’s top diplomat emphasized to Mr Erdogan that the rules for joining the EU could not oblige him to drop his objection to Cyprus’s membership in NATO, as Ankara had feared.

“Our view is that EU processes shouldn’t affect or be brought into NATO processes,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Despite wariness across Europe, the United States has long supported Ankara’s ambitions to join the EU because Washington hopes anchoring Turkey in the region’s institutions could encourage more integration between Muslim states and the West.

But Monday’s high-level intervention also showed US determination to thwart any EU attempt to use the bloc’s power to exert greater influence over NATO — a transatlantic alliance traditionally dominated by Washington. —Reuters