Prodi, accompanied by EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, met top officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul – the first president of the EU executive to hold talks in Ankara since Turkey signed an association agreement with the European Economic Community in 1963.

Turkey has been an EU candidate since 1999, but is the only country among 13 states not to have begun accession talks with the pan-European bloc.

EU leaders are to decide in December 2004 whether the strictly secular and western-oriented country has made enough progress in democratic reforms to open membership negotiations.

Ankara argues that it has fulfilled all the political criteria required to open membership talks, and earned the right to open accession negotiations.

At a press conference on the eve of his visit, Prodi welcomed “huge progress” by Turkey to enact EU-oriented reforms, but said “we’ll also look at the question of implementation of legislation on the ground.”

The Union has also told Ankara that it needs to help broker a settlement to the long-standing division of Cyprus if it wants to join the bloc.

An EU summit in Brussels in December underlined “the importance of Turkey’s expression of political will to settle the Cyprus problem. In this respect a settlement of the Cyprus problem...would greatly facilitate Turkey’s membership aspirations”.

Turkey rejects any link between the Cyprus question and its own EU aspirations, but Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul acknowledged in a newspaper interview this week that failure to resolve the dispute could prove costly.

“We are running late for a solution. Our hand is weakening. We cannot get rid of a problem by postponing it. This is where we are at in Cyprus,” Gul said in comments published by the liberal Radikal daily.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey occ

UPIed the north in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

The EU is pressing for a settlement by May 2004 when it is set to admit the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot side. It says the Turkish Cypriots will be denied entry if a settlement is not struck in time.

Such a prospect threatens to spark tensions between the European Union and EU candidate Turkey, which maintains 30,000 soldiers in northern Cyprus.

Once the island joins the EU, Turkey could be considered an occ

UPIer of EU soil.

Gul told Radikal that Ankara was sincere in its efforts to help end the island’s division, but said he would also tell Prodi not to expect Ankara to sacrifice its interests and Turkish Cypriots for a solution.

“We will tell him that they cannot expect a ‘give-it-away’ approach,” the minister said.

Ankara has suggested Cyprus peace talks could soon resume on the basis of a reunification plan put forward by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, which Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash rejected in March last year.

The Turkish government is expected to set out its proposals following a key meeting of the National Security Council, which brings together the country’s civilian and military leadership, on January 23.