BRUSSELS, Dec 11: European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to a partial freeze of Turkey’s EU membership talks, in an unprecedented move to penalise Ankara for failing to normalise trade with Cyprus.

But they also stressed there should be no breakdown in talks with the EU’s biggest and most strategically important candidate on the sensitive border between Europe and the Middle East.

Ministers decided unanimously to suspend eight of the 35 chapters or policy areas into which negotiations are divided, covering trade, financial services, agriculture and transport, and review Turkey’s compliance annually until 2009.

“I am sorry to disappoint you: there will be no train crash.

The train is in fact still firmly on the track,” British Foreign

Secretary Margaret Beckett, Turkey’s most outspoken supporter, told a news conference after a day of closed-door wrangling.

However, diplomats said it was the first time in the history of the EU’s enlargement process that the bloc had imposed such a sanction against a candidate country, although France twice vetoed Britain’s entry talks in the 1960s.

The 25 ministers agreed that negotiations on sectors not affected by the freeze should go ahead but not be concluded until Ankara complies with its customs union obligation to open ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus.—Reuters