UN Secretary-General worried about the talks

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday telephoned the two leaders to express his concern at the “slow” pace of the talks in recent weeks and urged them to make “concrete advances”.

According to a UN spokesman, Ban called President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu separately to discuss “the state of the UN-supported talks on Cyprus”.

The spokesman said Ban was closely following developments in the negotiations through his Special Adviser Alexander Downer ahead of the progress report due next month.

“In his conversations with the leaders, the Secretary-General noted that the process has been slow in recent weeks and urged them to achieve concrete advances in the current discussions on property in order to maintain momentum in the peace process,” said the spokesman.

The Cyprus Mail quotes a source close to the negotiations as saying that “the UN has real doubts that the will exists for a solution on either side. Property negotiations are going round in circles”.

The two leaders have been discussing the property issue for months but have yet to reach the core of the issue, as in, who gets what. If no progress is made on property, then the future is bleak for the remaining chapters, he added.

The UN is not happy with either side, according to the source. The Greek Cypriot side is seen as not being in much of a hurry in the talks while the Turkish Cypriots’ near fatal effort to have the Turkish ambassador to the breakaway state attend the Limnitis opening did not go unnoticed.

Confusion prevails over whether meeting can be arranged. According to the Cyprus Mail, Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu told reporters that he accepted the invitation to New York and that if Christofias did too then the meeting would take place there within 15 days.
Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou yesterday acknowledged that the UNSG “sounded out the president during their telephone conversation about a meeting taking place in the next 15 days in New York”.

“As things stand it is not possible in the coming days for the president to travel to New York given his schedule. (He) travels to Brussels and then there is the official visit of the Syrian president to Cyprus,” said Stefanou.

Asked what Ban’s response was, he said: “The SG sounded out the president to see if there is such a possibility at this time. He understands that the schedule is heavy.”

Asked whether the issue would be raised in the future, Stefanou said “it was left vague”.

However, speaking from UN headquarters in New York, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters that “at this stage, there are no plans for a tripartite meeting between the Secretary-General and the Cypriot leaders, either in New York or elsewhere”.

He noted that Ban is leaving next week for Asia and “is going to have quite a number of travels during the coming three weeks”, adding, “So there is no plan for that”.

Speaking last night at a Ledra Palace event to celebrate 65 years of the UN, Christofias told the audience: “I want to assure you, because there is misinformation, that I hope the soonest possible to meet the Secretary-General and Mr Eroglu in New York.”

Following a meeting in Athens, the Prime Ministers of Greece and Turkey, George Papandreou and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, yesterday expressed their intention to “contribute” towards moving efforts to solve the Cyprus problem forward and “away from stagnation”.

The Cyprus Mail’s satirical column Coffeeshop reports that the reason Christofias did not agree to meet the UN Secretary-General and Dervis Eroglu within the next week was, he explained on Astra radio yesterday, because he had a very busy schedule and could not meet Ban Ki-moon before November 15. You can’t expect the guy to drop everything, cancel the scheduled openings of village schools, art exhibitions and rural community centres because Ban has got a bit stressed out about the lack of progress in the talks. Did nobody inform him that we rejected suffocating time-frames?

Moreover, he says that there have recently been reports of a falling out between the Greek PM and the comrade president. Why had he not gone to the climate conference in Athens on Friday? His Friday schedule involved meetings with an assortment of inconsequential committees and on Friday evening he was to inaugurate the Athienou gymnasium. And when we consider, that a few weeks ago he took the private jet and flew to Barcelona for some minor conference, returning the same day, the rumours of a falling out do not seem too far-fetched. He could have gone to Athens and returned in time to open the Athienou gymnasium.