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EU 'should expand beyond Europe'

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has suggested the European Union should work towards including Russia, Middle Eastern and North African countries. He said enlargement was "our most powerful tool" for extending stability.

He said the EU must "keep our promises to Turkey", adding: "If we fail.... it will signal a deep and dangerous divide between east and west".

"As a club that countries want to join, it can persuade countries to play by the rules, and set global standards. In the way it dispenses its responsibilities around the world, it can be a role model that others follow."
He said the goal "must be a multilateral free-trade zone around our periphery". This would be a "version of the European Free Trade Association that could gradually bring the countries of the Mahgreb, the Middle East and Eastern Europe in line with the single market, not as an alternative to membership, but potentially as a step towards it".

BBC, Thursday, 15 November 2007