US pressure wrong

European Commission President Romano Prodi and Enrique Barón Crespo, leader of the Group of European Socialists in the European Parliament, were absolutely right in sternly rebuking the United States for putting such heavy-handed pressure on the Commission and EU member states during the Copenhagen summit to set a fixed date to begin accession talks with Turkey.
Unfortunately, this policy was also followed by President Clinton's administration, to my intense discomfort. As director of European affairs in the National Security Council during 1994-1995, I tried without success to dissuade some of my colleagues from pressuring the EU on this issue during the semi-annual US-EU summit meetings.
While there is no doubt that Turkey is of great importance to the stability of the region and is critical to any military action against Iraq, Washington has no business asking the EU to take actions which would have a fundamental impact on its identity and mission in order to promote common transatlantic objectives which would be far better handled in other fora, such as NATO.
The Bush administration's pressure on Brussels illustrates its disregard for the significant substantive challenges which Turkish accession to the EU would pose and its lack of appreciation for the enormous achievement of EU integration which would arguably be put at risk by such accession.
Anthony Gardner