While Turkey must sign an agreement extending its European Union customs agreement to include Cyprus and other new EU members before starting accession talks with the Union, it faces no deadline for ratifying the deal, an official in Brussels said yesterday.

Nicosia expressed satisfaction yesterday with the text of the agreement Ankara is to sign, but Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos insisted that Turkey must also be forced to ratify the deal «within a specific time framework.»

The European Commission said it had received a letter from Ankara confirming the Turkish government was ready to sign the customs union extension. But Commission spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy said signature, not ratification, was the precondition for starting the accession talks on October 3. The agreement must be ratified by Turkey's Parliament.

Also EU commissioner for expansion Olli Rehn said that signing the deal would not be tantamount to formal legal recognition of Cyprus, which Ankara has refused to proceed with before the island - its northern third still occupied by Turkey after its invasion in 1974 - is reunited.

Nagy added, however, that Turkish plans to retain a ban on Cypriot ships and aircraft entering Turkey's harbors and airports even after signing the deal violated the customs union agreement.

«The Commission has consistently reminded Turkey that those restrictions have to be removed,» she said.

Meanwhile, indications grew yesterday that both Nicosia and the Turkish-Cypriot leadership are moving closer to the prospect of reopening United Nations-sponsored talks on reunification.

Cypriot government spokesman Kypros Chrysostomidis said contacts with the UN were at «a sufficiently advanced stage,» while Turkish-Cypriot administration leader Mehmet Ali Talat said he was «considering undertaking an initiative for the resumption of talks.»

This followed statements by Greek Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis, after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York on Monday, that there was a convergence of views on resuming the negotiations that came to a dead end last April. (Page 2)