Solana, Turkish foreign minister play down tension

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said after talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in Brussels on Tuesday that Turkey does not want its problems with the European Union to affect its relations with NATO.

"Today the Turkish minister was very clear on that point: he does not want that dispute to affect NATO's development at this very important time," Solana said in comments broadcast by Spanish TV.

It said Spain's foreign minister, Abel Matutes, had insisted that Turkey would be welcome to join the EU once it had met all the political conditions.

"Now is not the time to tighten the rope, but rather, precisely, to recall those aspects, those interests, which unite us, which are, of course, far more numerous than those which divide us," Matutes said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.