"EU’s Rehn sees tension ahead with Turkey
By Paul Taylor and Marcin Grajewski
‘European Commission is working to avoid a train crash at the end of the year’
RELATIONS BETWEEN the European Union and Turkey face turbulence later this year over Cyprus and it will take deft diplomacy to avoid a 'train crash', EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said yesterday.
The EU has said Turkey, with which it began membership talks last October, must open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus this year under an agreement extending its customs union to the 10 new countries that joined the 25-nation bloc in 2004.
Turkey has so far refused, linking the issue to an ending of an economic blockade of the Turkish-occupied north, which the government has prevented Brussels from easing."
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