PARIS, November 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - France's representative on the body charting the European Union's future stepped into the row over Turkey's bid for EU membership on Sunday, November 10, saying the bloc was not a "Christian club" and Ankara should be judged on the same criteria as any other candidate. Meanwhile, Greece said that EU rejection of Turkey would be a serious error.

"Europe is not a Christian club and it should not have hidden criteria," former Europe minister Pierre Moscovici told a Jewish radio, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Moscovici was speaking two days after Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French former president who chairs the Convention on the Future of Europe, sparked controversy by rejecting the idea of Turkish membership as the "end of the European Union".

Moscovici said Giscard d'Estaing's comments were a "completely legitimate" expression of his views but insisted that "in the enlarged Europe we are building, a Europe of 500 million people, there are and there will be Muslims who have a place there."

The EU "has already given its word and must keep its word", he said, adding that Turkey's Justice and Development party (AKP), which has its roots in a banned Islamic party, should be "judged by its actions" after its landslide election victory last week.

Giscard d'Estaing, who is drafting an EU constitution, had alluded to Turkey's Muslim population, saying that the country had a "different culture" and a high birth rate that would make it potentially the EU's largest country, AFP said.

His comments provoked anger among Turkish and EU officials, with the outgoing Turkish government calling immediately for his resignation.

Next month's EU summit in Copenhagen is due to decide whether or not to set a date for membership negotiations with Turkey, which is pushing for talks to start in 2003.

Meanwhile in Athens, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said at the weekend that the European Union would be making a "serious error" if it closed off the prospect of EU membership for Turkey.

"The possibility of the adhesion of Turkey is a big challenge for Europe, and it would be a serious error if the great European experience is stopped geographically at the Balkans," Papandreou was quoted as saying Saturday, November 9, by the Greek news agency ANA.

The Greek foreign minister said he disagreed with Giscard d'Estaing, the head of the Brussels-based convention on the future structure of the EU.

Papandreou said Turkey's membership in the EU was of "vital importance" for Greece.

He described Athens support for the membership of Turkey and Balkan countries as natural, as Germany supports the entry of Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states.

In Ankara, meanwhile, Turkish poll winner Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to follow the path of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as the nation commemorated its secularist father on Sunday.

The president and the powerful army, the self-declared guardian of secularism, took the opportunity to declare that fundamentalism would not be tolerated.

"Our robust adherence to Ataturk and his principles will always guide us in building a modern Turkey," Erdogan said in a statement to mark the 64th anniversary of Ataturk's death.

"I wish to emphasize our determination to carry further with all its elements the heritage the Great Leader has left," the Justice and Development Party (AKP) chairman said in the statement, carried by Anatolia news agency.

The principles of Ataturk, who built modern Turkey on the ashes of the Ottoman empire in 1923, are synonymous here with secularism and pro-Western orientation.

Erdogan participated in ceremonies at Ataturk's mausoleum in Ankara along with other political leaders and the top army brass.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said at the ceremonies that "all movements aimed at destroying the secular and democratic republic and the modern gains of the nation will be resisted with determination."

His remarks mirrored a message by the military.