Christofias at UN

President Christofias, addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, called on the Turkish leadership to meet him, parallel to the negotiating process, “so that I can share with them my vision for a solution of the Cyprus problem which would serve the interests of the Cypriots, of Turkey, of Greece as well as of peace and security in the region”.

“The people of Cyprus have suffered enough”, he said. “It is time to overcome the problems, to achieve reconciliation between the two communities and to reunite our country and our people for the sake of peace and of the future generations”.

Referring to Archbishop Makarios’ acceptance in 1977 of the evolution of the unitary state into a bicommunal bizonal federation, he said that historic compromise constituted a brave concession by the Greek Cypriot community towards their Turkish Cypriot compatriots.

He referred to his set of proposals expressing the belief that they would benefit all sides and could create the necessary political climate to push the entire process forward, but added that unfortunately, the Turkish Cypriot leadership have rejected them. He also again proposed that the National Guard and the Turkish Army cancel their annual military exercises this autumn.

“Turkey’s leadership has been assuring the international community that it wants a solution of the problem by the end of 2010. We are still waiting for their words to be transformed into deeds”, he concluded.

An editorial in the Sunday Mail says that when President Christofias goes to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, we hear all kinds of boasts. This week we were informed that, during a meeting at UN headquarters, the president told the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Turkey was not ready to solve the Cyprus problem. He also accused Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu of engaging in a blame game and of being used in Ankara’s communications game.
After exposing Turkey’s ‘unacceptable’ behaviour, he asked Ban to urge the Turkish leadership to translate words into deeds and the Secretary-General, reportedly, agreed to do so.

But there was no evidence to suggest that Ban made such a request at his subsequent meeting with President Abdullah Gul. On the contrary, according to a UN spokesman, Ban encouraged Gul and Turkey to carry on helping maintain the momentum of the Cyprus talks while Gul said that Turkey would carry on co-operating with the UN in the negotiations.

Not everything said in these meetings is made public, but it is doubtful that Ban would have reprimanded Gul for not translating words into deeds, as Christofias had claimed. A few days earlier, at his meeting the Greek PM George Papandreou, Ban had reportedly asked for the talks to be intensified and would have made the same plea to Christofias, even if this was not reported by the latter.

The problem, however, is that every time the UN has proposed the intensification of the talks, it is the Cyprus president who is resistant and not the Turkish side. In this way Christofias is assisting Ankara’s communications game, because he is allowing Turkey to appear more committed to a settlement than the Greek Cypriot side. While this is not necessarily true, it is the main impression created among third parties, no matter what Christofias says about communications games and Turkey’s unwillingness to solve the Cyprus problem.

He should know that words count for nothing, as the DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades pointed out on Thursday when he called on Christofias to stop deluding himself about what was actually happening. Unless Turkey was tested at the negotiating table, we would never establish whether she was playing a communications game or was sincerely interested in a settlement. This was something that Christofias has failed to do and was the reason why everyone outside Cyprus is praising Turkey’s allegedly constructive approach to the talks.

The president is deluding himself if he genuinely thinks that by reporting Turkey to the UN Secretary-General, of playing a communications game and not being ready to solve the Cyprus problem, he is winning diplomatic victories. He also needs to translate words into deeds if he is to expose the games that Ankara has been playing so successfully in the last few years and have earned kudos from everyone.

Loucas Charalambous writing in the Mail refers to an interview in last week’s Sunday Mail, in which Dervis Eroglu said: “No-one in Cyprus is any longer a refugee. On both sides people have established new lives, so what we need is a solution that does not bring about social upheaval. I am not saying some Greek Cypriots cannot come and live among us, but it has to be limited. If 160,000 Greek Cypriots returned to the north, where are we supposed to go?” Needless to say, he adds it caused the usual knee-jerk reaction.

He says that clearly the Turkish Cypriot leader meant that close to 40 years after the movement of populations, the people on both sides have settled in their new places of residence. They have created new lives and the truth is that almost none of them would be prepared to leave his current home to go back and start from the beginning again. This is a simple truth, a reality that no political slogan or piece of rhetoric could ignore. It might not suit the demagogues who dominate our political life, it might not suit the pseudo-patriots of the mass media but this is the truth.

Interestingly, the view expressed by Eroglu is shared by the vast majority of the Greek Cypriot refugees. It is no coincidence that the majority of them voted against the settlement in 2004.

Most of the refugees who were over 40 years of age in 1974 have now passed away. Those who were under 20 are now middle aged, with their own families, living and working throughout the free areas. None of them would want to settle in the north. What would they do there? As for those who were between 21 and 40 in 1974, the majority of them are now pensioners with grandchildren.

So who are the refugees whom the demagogues are claiming want to return to the north under Turkish Cypriot administration? And if some of them would want to return, where is the problem? Even Eroglu’s proposals on the property issue say that 15 per cent of the population in the north could be Greek Cypriot.

Kyrenia currently has a population of 50,000 which would mean that 7,500 thousand Greek Cypriots could return if they wanted to. But in 1974, only 3,000 Greek Cypriots were living in Kyrenia and about half of them have died since then. So there would be no problem for all remaining 1,500 refugees were to return to Kyrenia if they wanted to do so.

I mention this only to highlight the stupidity and superficiality behind the slogans and vacuous rhetoric about the “return of all refugees”. If Eroglu were smarter, he would have proposed that any refugee who wanted to could return to Kyrenia. He would have made complete fools of us when a hundred refugees, at most, decided to return. Yet all this demagoguery is official policy. And then we wonder why nobody outside Cyprus takes us seriously.

The Mail’s satirical column Coffeeshop congratulates Christofias for his eloquent sound-bite that “we are waiting for Turkey to translate words into deeds.” We would just like to add that the Turks should take their time because we are against suffocating time frames.