Downer says political will for solution is "impressive"

The Cyprus Mail reports that U.N. special envoy Alexander Downer yesterday faced his first real Cyprus media challenge, successfully giving away nothing during a news conference in Nicosia. Along with the usual UN platitudes, the paper says, such as being “encouraged”, seeing “political will”, and predicting a “difficult process”, yet being “cautiously optimistic”, the Australian former Foreign Minister deftly dodged a number of Cyprob questions.

Asked about the guarantees issued – a red line for Turkey – Downer cheerfully replied: “I’m not going there.”Speaking of the process so far, he said: “There will be ups and downs and goods days and bad days. There will be good headlines and bad headlines of course.” But he said he was determined that this time the process would succeed.

Reminded of the 16 other envoys that had gone before him who had probably also felt the same way when they took on the Cyprus issue, Downer said: “I wouldn’t have taken on this job if I thought it was a doomed job. I looked at it very carefully before I accepted this job and I thought there was a chance of the process being successful and I remain of that view.”

He said just because the process had failed in the past, it did not mean “you don’t try to make it succeed in the present or the future”.

“There is a time when these things can work and there is a time when they won’t. Time and circumstances change. It depends on a lot of variables,” he said.“The circumstances of today are not the same as four years ago or 34 years ago. You have two leaders who want to succeed and are quite determined to succeed.”He did, however, concede that it was taking a lot more time than he had originally anticipated

Downer leaves the island today for Australia and will then travel to New York to brief the Security Council on the Cyprus meetings. He will not be present when the leaders meet again on Thursday.

He rounded off his news conference with another statement of optimism after being asked whether he was equally optimistic now as he was before the negotiations began.“But I’m not naïve,” he said. “This is an incredibly difficult process but I am optimistic. What I’ve looked for is political will and it’s impressive. That gives me cause for cautious optimism.”