Talks focus on economy

The leaders of the two communities in Cyprus and officials exchanged views on the economy at their talks on Tuesday, the UN's Special Envoy in Cyprus, Alexander Downer said.

The meeting began about 10 o’clock in the morning, with a break for lunch, and went on until about 5 o’clock in the evening.

He added that the representatives and technical officials will be meeting again on Friday [26 February] for further discussions on the economy.

When pressed to say whether the discussion had focused on anything else, Downer said: "The leaders also had a separate meeting with their representatives on all aspects of the negotiations; a broader discussion rather than just on the economy". He added: "I chose my words very carefully and they met separately to discuss all aspects of the negotiations, all aspects of the problem".

This was corroborrated by President Christofias who said that he and Mr Talat had had a tete-a-tete meeting during which “we freely exchanged views on current issues that each side could put forward and also on all aspects of the Cyprus problem”.

Downer said the next three meetings in March will cover the chapters of economy, EU matters and property “and whatever else can be discussed, if there is time”. The two men are due to meet on March 4, 16 and 30.

He said the two leaders still had “a significant number of aspects to the economy chapter” which “they need to go through”. “President Christofias for his part would like to concentrate on economic matters,” he said.

Although the talks between the two leaders are scheduled to end on March 30, Downer said that the Turkish Cypriot side would like negotiations to continue beyond that date. “The Turkish Cypriots would like it to be two more meetings on top of that but in any case there will be these four meetings and the last of which is planned for the end of March, so there will be a fair bit of activity,” said Downer.

The process could thereafter be disrupted because the ‘TRNC’ has elections scheduled for April 18 and 25 where Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat will battle it out with ‘Prime Minister’ Dervis Eroglu for the ‘presidency’.

“Whoever wins the elections will lead the Turkish Cypriot side. If Talat wins, there will be continuity; if it is Eroglu, we don’t know how he will approach it,” said Downer. He added that the United Nations would deal with how to approach the outcome of the elections in the north when the time came to do so.

Asked about the extent to which there had been progress towards a solution of the Cyprus problem Downer commented that a solution was attainable but that the two leaders would have to work their way through a number of issues they had not yet completed in order to do so.

“This is obviously a difficult problem. I said this on many occasions that the Cyprus problem would have been solved long ago if it wasn’t difficult to solve,” he said.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s personal representative to the Cyprus talks Leopold Maurer was also present at the talks, according to reports.

The two leaders will meet again for their second all-day session next Thursday.

The Turkish Cypriot assembly has unanimously passed a resolution saying that Turkey’s guarantees are “vital and the most fundamental element” of the solution to the Cyprus problem, the Turkish Cypriot press reports.

The resolution was issued in response to a resolution passed unanimously last Thursday by the Cyprus House of Representatives denouncing Turkey’s “arbitrary” interpretation of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee.

The Cyprus Mail reports that Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, fearful of any reciprocal measure by the Turkish Cypriot parliament, had called on President Christofias and DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades to hold back the resolution but to no avail.,

Speaking after the talks on Tuesday, Talat said that he discussed the issue with President Demetris Christofias during their meeting.

Talat described the decision by Greek Cypriot parliamentarians as a bad one: “We can’t do much about this issue. What’s happened has happened. It was bad. It was wrong. The climate has been ruined. The positive climate between us, whatever level it was at, has been ruined. That’s why it wasn’t a good thing.”

Talat also emphasised that the Greek Cypriot side had yet to agree to his request for an extra four meetings beyond the four already scheduled to take place before the elections in the north on April 18.

Meanwhile in a secret ballot on Tuesday, DIKO central committee members last night voted by an overwhelming majority to stay in the government coalition, following weeks of speculation and meetings.

At the start of the meeting, which ran for nine hours, DIKO President Marios Garoyian, analysed the course of the Cyprus problem and the talks currently underway, underlining that the results from this negotiation process had been “zero”.

DIKO’s well-known objection to the handling of the Cyprus problem were forcefully stated earlier in the week by DIKO Vice President Nicolas Papadopoulos when he said of the offer by Christofias to include a representative from DIKO in the negotiation team: “What will this person do, promote the rotating presidency, promote the strategy of Demetris Christofias, which we area seeking to change? It’s a gift not worth having”.

At the meeting of the central committee, Fotis Fotiou, spokesman for DIKO, said that the party saw itself as a guardian of the norms and prospects of the country, and the good of the land, and emphasised that “there is no possibility that we will abandon this mission of ours”. He said that, even if DIKO were to remain in the government, it reserved the right to disagree and made it clear that the party did not support all the positions of Christofias and the government.

DIKO’s primary objections when it comes to the talks are the issues of the rotating presidency, weighted voting and the right of 50,000 Turkish settlers to remain on the island.

Fotiou emphasised that DIKO’s offer to stay in the government did not constitute a carte blanche and that, in the instance where the direct negotiations process proceeded to the realisation of an “unforgivable” solution DIKO reserved the right to withdraw from the government.