In part, that reflects a lingering bitterness over 11th-hour issues that tainted the start of Turkey's membership talks.

A decade later, Turkey and Greece were poised to begin membership talks simultaneously.

European Union members remained deadlocked over the weekend on holding membership talks with Turkey.

Mr. Berlusconi has said that he wants membership talks to start as soon as next year.

Turkey has not yet been given a firm start date for membership talks and already faces plenty of obstacles.

China's recently completed membership talks started in the 1980's.

It came as no surprise when the European Union recently suspended some of its planned membership talks with Turkey.

The membership talks have been suspended since.

Assuming this is done, formal membership talks would begin on 3 October 2005.

Mr. Gref said he hoped Russia would complete final membership talks within six months.