Things are going well

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus Alexander Downer believes that Turkey wants a solution and that things are going well in the talks on Cyprus, better than what most people on the island think. In an interview with Politis he says he is cautiously optimistic that the process will bear fruit. He says he feels that both leaders in Cyprus envisage the bizonal bicommunal federation in the same way and that the issue will revolve around them finding the golden mean.

He says that while Turkey may have clear view of what the solution should be, nevertheless they are letting Mr Talat negotiate. They want the problem solved because the fact that Turkey maintains a large number of troops on the island causes tension and difficulties for them. "They have a problem in their back yard that they would like to see solved", he adds. They have committed themselves to the process and they support the process, he says.

Regarding the guarantees, he says these will have to be examined by all concerned as the issue does not just concern the two leaders. The Greek government, he says, has made clear that it does not believe they should continue, the Turkish government has stated publicly that it wants them to continue, while the British government hasn't said anything and we don't know what their stand will be.

"My job is not to be optimistic", he says "but I wouldn't have undertaken this position if I believed that there was no possibility of success". He added that while Cypriots understandably are not very optimistic as a result of the past history of the Cyprus problem, nevertheless sitting in on the negotiations as their host, he sees what is happening. "To be honest, I believe they are going quite well and I am cautiously optimistic. If I were not, I would say so. But I am cautiously optimistic". He emphasises that it is of paramount importance for a solution that the momentum is kept up. "Time will tell", he concludes.

Makarios Droushiotis in an article in Politis on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the TRNC, says it has been a failure both politically and economically. Politically because it came up against the reaction of the permanent members of the Security Council, especially the US whose firm stand has been for a single state in Cyprus, economically becuse the state has never been viable but was always a Turkish protectorate. Its total dependence on Turkey transferred all of Turkey's problems to the T/C community and prevented it from developing as a separate entity. Half the population gets a salary or financial support by a state which has little revenue of its own and hardly produces anything. Even the brief building boom after 2004 failed to give the economy a boost due to the lack of healthy economic infrastructure to enable proper development.

Admittedly 2004 was a watershed in the history of the island because for the first time in their history the two communities had a common objective in joining the EU. The T/Cs recognised that their future lay with the EU and not as a Turkish outpost. We admired their uprising and applauded their youth, yet know full well that, had their separate state succeeded, had it brought them prosperity, freedom and contact with the outside world, they would not have wanted unification. On the other hand if the 1974 events hadn't happened, the G/C would not be seeking federation, let alone accepting political equality, or a rotating presidency.

Today after half a century of being adversaries we should leave yesterday behind and invest in tomorrow, settling on a compromise that will be better than the status quo. If this will be in the form of a federation, the G/Cs must come to terms with the fact that the TRNC will be a constituent part of that state. Likewise the T/Cs must acknowledge that the fact that we are in a position to reunite the country under the umbrella of the EU is an achievement of the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member with a healthy economy, without dependencies from Greece or anywhere else. In order to reunite the country we will inherit all the burdens and chaos of the TRNC and enable the T/C to become EU members overnight. If they truly have abandoned their aim for recognition they must reduce their demands on the federation and stick to making sure they acquire political equality and that they have effective participation in the state. It is logical that they should want security safeguards and for their concerns that they won't be absorbed by the G/Cs to be alleviated, but they are not justified in threatening partition and wanting numerical equality and for everything to be split half and half, without taking G/C fears into account. One of the main reasons why the Zurich agreement collapsed was the feeling of injustice felt by G/Cs that T/Cs had been given too many prerogatives in the 1960 constitution. If a solution is to be reached, it must be made to last and not to collapse for the same reasons.

Loucas Charalambous, writing in the Sunday Mail and Politis, says politicians and journalists keep talking about the need to inform people about a how a federal system of government works because people are in the dark. It is astonishing that 30 years after the two sides signed agreements accepting a federation as the new system of government, we still have not bothered to learn how it works. He blames politicians and says this is either because they do not know themselves or they do not want to explain things to the people. The best example of this misinformation campaign was provided by the former president Tassos Papadopoulos in an interview published by the Khaleej Times on September 4, 2004 who had no compunction about using a big lie to create hostile sentiments against a federal settlement. Ironically it is the very same journalists who so zealously misinformed the public about the provisions of the Annan plan back in 2004 that are today demanding that people be informed about how federation would work. So where should people be getting their information from if politicians and journalists cannot be trusted? For citizens to be correctly informed, we need well-informed and honest journalists. But it is a bit rich for journalists who, either through ignorance or consciously, became vehicles for the promotion of the most ruthless misinformation campaign ever carried out in Cyprus, to now demand information about the federal settlement. Why did they not make this demand back in 2004?

Coffeeshop says Christofias' trip to Russia was a personal triumph of epic proportions, but a fiasco for the country. Our presidente went through the trip in what could only be described as drunken daze caused not by the consumption of vodka, but by the red carpet treatment he received at the Kremlin which went straight to his head. Here was the poor village boy from Dikomo, being treated like royalty by the Russian government – inspecting guards of honour, spending time with the Russian president, staying at palatial premises in the Kremlin and the Moscow roads being closed especially for his cavalcade to pass. Not even in his wildest dreams, as an impoverished student in Moscow, would he have thought that one day he would be waltzing around the Kremlin, with uniformed minders and having discussions with the Russian president.

The treatment intoxicated him, which was why he exhibited the main symptoms of drunkenness – verbal incontinence and lack of touch with your surroundings. How else could you explain his insistence on heaping praise on Soviet communism, while sitting under a portrait of Tsar Nicholas II? He was too intoxicated to realize that this might offend his hosts who considered the Soviet era as a black mark on Russia’s history, hence the portrait of the last Tsar in a state building.

His verbal incontinence is guaranteed to have pissed off many of our EU partners as well, especially the attack on NATO, which was totally unnecessary. It was bad enough that he took on the role of salesman of the Russian government’s proposal for the re-drafting of Europe’s security system, which is far from popular in the EU. But did he have to disparage NATO, which most former Eastern Bloc countries joined in order to have some protection from Russia? The intoxication boosted his delusions of grandeur, mouthing off against NATO and defiantly supporting a security system that none of his EU partners are remotely interested in. And when challenged about going against his partners, he joked that he was proud to be the ‘red sheep’ of the Union.

This comes as additional confirmation of what our establishment had written a few weeks ago – that our deluded presidente is grossly over-estimating his influence on the international stage, and getting ideas way above his station. Not only did he go to Moscow looking to buy €200 million worth of tanks and missiles, he also agreed to be the EU agent of its European security proposal and to lead the effort to abolish the visa requirement for Russians traveling to the EU. And all this in exchange for what? A meaningless joint declaration about the Cyprob, the only positive point of which was that it angered Talat, and a vague promise that Russia would support our positions at the UN Security Council, as long as it does not cause a fall-out with one of its leading trading partners – Turkey.

Incidentally, while the red sheep was in Moscow bleating about our principled allies, the Russian defence minister was in Ankara negotiating the sale to the Turks of five weapon systems worth a billion bucks. The Turks did not ask for support of their positions in the Security Council as a deal sweetener, because they knew Russia’s stands at the UN are guided exclusively by principles and she would never back a country which invades an independent state.

Meanwhile uber-patriotic hard-liner Ethnarch Junior, Nicholas got a lot of air-time this week after complaining that people who express disagreement over the comrade’s handling of the Cyprob, were subjected to “intellectual terror”. When his dad was Ethnarch there was much greater tolerance to people who expressed disagreements with his Cyprob handling. They may have been routinely labeled Turkish agents, but their views were respected.