Talks begin in New York

The UN are following a process of proximity talks with the leaders of the two communities in New York in an effort to move the process forward, Politis reports. Each team will have separate contacts with the UN during which the UN experts will also put forward bridging proposals, with neither side knowing how the other side positions itself on the issues put on the table.

The procedure began in the morning with the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the first topic under discussion was that of government, specifically the executive powers. It was followed by the other three difficult chapters, namely the property issue, the territorial issue and settlers.

The UN Secretary-General will not be at the Green Tree Estate in Long Island where the talks are being held during the proximity talks but he will return tomorrow after lunch to continue the procedure with talks together with the two leaders.

One last minute change will be that the UN S-G will issue his final statement on Tuesday morning and not Monday evening. According to reports this was after a request by Mr Christofias that he wanted greater involvement of the UN S-G in the process. Thus Mr Ban will preside over the talks from 3 pm on Sunday to Monday evening (rumour has it they may go on till 10 pm).

It is believed that Mr Ban will submit bridging proposals to overcome any deadlocks.

Last night Mr Ban had a private meeting with his representative Alexander Downer during which he was briefed as to the progress of the talks in Cyprus.

President Christofias said yesterday that he did not have high expectations from the two-day intensive negotiations in New York between himself, the Turkish Cypriot leader and the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon which started today.

“I had hoped we would be close to an agreement. However we are not and I hope that the UN S-G is correctly informed by his advisors and of course has the correct appraisal of the situation,” Christofias said.

Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu said that although the Turkish Cypriot side was working towards a timely solution, the Greek Cypriot side was trying to postpone any possible solution for 2013, the Cyprus News Agency reported.

Eroglu said that his side was entering the talks with a clear strategy and would discuss all chapters except property, territory and guarantees.

Eroglu said that they had not reached convergence on all issues because the Greek Cypriot side failed to respond on certain areas.

Failing to reach agreement on property has being worrying UN circles with one person close to the talks saying that failing to reach agreement on who gets what meant that the future was bleak for the remaining chapters.

Christofias said that Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots were wrongly trying to convey the impression a solution was close.

“Unfortunately, that is propaganda. So I want to believe that during this conference there will be genuine progress, and the condition for that is for the Turkish Cypriot side and Turkey in general to shift away from the intransigent positions they have been putting forth,” Christofias said.

The President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso on Friday called on both leaders to grasp the opportunity to reach a comprehensive settlement now”.

Barroso said that after more than three years of talks, which started in September 2008, “the time has come to close all outstanding core issues”.

The revelation that President Christofias had withdrawn his proposal for a rotating presidency, because Dervis Eroglu has reneged on the issue of weighted, cross-voting, which he now wants removed, confirms that the only thing that Christofias has achieved with his amateurish handling of the Cyprus problem was to trap himself deep in a labyrinth, from which it is impossible to find a way out, says Loucas Charalambous writing in the Cyprus Mail.

Even his claim that Eroglu has reneged on what had been agreed is incorrect. When Mehmet Ali Talat was the Turkish Cypriot negotiator, he had agreed to cross-voting only if there was a rotating presidency. But this was never put in writing because Christofias was afraid that his allies, DIKO and EDEK would not approve of it and block it. Talat was furious with this behaviour.

And now Christofias is claiming that the Turkish side reneged on the agreement, without being able to document this because the agreement, thanks to his objections, was never formalised.

It also has to be mentioned that this business with weighted cross-voting and a rotating presidency has turned into a farce. Until a few days ago, Christofias considered it his achievement, but nobody else, on either side accepted it. With weighted voting Greek Cypriots, in effect, would be able to vote whichever Turkish Cypriot they wanted. This is the reason why Eroglu is opposed to it. None of the Greek Cypriot parties (apart from the president’s) accept it either (I still have not understood why). What is significant here is that this chaotic mess was created by Christofias’ insistence that the sensible provision of the Annan plan about the establishment of a presidential council, was scrapped and replaced by a president and vice-president.

This dogmatic obstinacy was motivated by one thing - his ambition to become the first president of the federal Cyprus state, when it eventually came into being. And the most ridiculous thing is that he wasted a year and a half of talks, focusing almost exclusively on this proposal, in order to persuade Talat to accept it.

The fact that now he has decided to withdraw his proposal, having wasted so many hours of talks on it, is another indication of how clueless and incompetent he is, not to mention his staggering lack of judgement.

For three years, he was negotiating, supposedly in order to secure a settlement of the Cyprus problem, but his primary concern, which also dictated his stance at the talks, was not to displease DIKO and EDEK in the hope that they would re-elect him president in 2013. Now that this hope has been dashed he has been left to roam alone inside his labyrinth.

We were very close to a solution with Christofias, says former Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat in an interview with Politis’ Makarios Droushiotis.

He says that all the issues on the chapter of government apart from the question of citizenship, had been agreed upon in early 2010, when the UN Secretary-General was due to come to Cyprus and announce what progress had been achieved.

However, nothing was announced, he said because “Christofias was afraid of his partners in government.” He added: “Since we had agreed, what was the problem with announcing it?”

Christofias made various excuses such as that this wasn’t real progress, he said, and now he says that Eroglu is reneging on previous agreements. “For me these things are incomprehensible”.

Asked whether they had ever discussed the question of a change of Turkish Cypriot leadership, Talat said many times. “I told him, Dimitri, you will not find anyone like me who wants a solution to the Cyprus problem. Come let’s solve it now. My mission is to solve the problem, Eroglu’s is partition. My objective in politics was a solution, nothing else. I was not interested in politics without a solution. If we solve the problem, I will withdraw. He was telling me if we solve it we will stay another term to implement it. I said, come let’s solve it first and we’ll see”.

He said Christofias didn’t recognise the danger that Eroglu coming to power presented. He believed that Turkey wanted a solution and that the Turkish Cypriots would just go along.

“But things aren’t like that at all”, he added. “ Turkey cannot impose a solution without the Turkish Cypriots’ cooperation”.

Asked how come in 2004 Turkey turned against Denktash, Talat said “I was the leader in 2004 and the people were out in the streets calling for a solution. Today things are different.

We lost another opportunity in 2010 as we did in 2004, he said. “I assure you in all honesty that we were ready for a solution and Turkey was with us. Now things have changed. It’s a shame because I believe we could have solved it”.

Despite the fact that he acknowledged Christofias had the good intention to solve the problem, he didn’t have the same sense of urgency that Talat had.

“I maintained that if we didn’t solve it now things would get even more complicated. We would all be lost. I tried to convince him that we should involve Greece, Turkey and the international community. The burden of finding a solution was too great for us to carry on our own. Unfortunately he did not respond to this sense of urgency”.

Talat went on to say that Christofias seemed afraid to proceed. “Dimitris wanted, but was cowardly. He wanted to majority of Greek Cypriot to support him, 80%. This is unreasonable”.

He added that possibly his backing off in 2004 was for the same reason. “What he did then, remains an open wound”, Talat said, although they never discussed it. “I felt he didn’t want to”.

“That decision was a black hole in the history of Akel”, he added. “They made many mistakes, for example their support for Enosis. But 2004 was a special mistake. To say no to an agreement which you say was good, was a mistake that will go down in history, especially if the opportunity doesn’t come up again”.

He also admitted that at Burgenstock he had asked Christofias whether he would vote yes for the plan he replied “are you mad, of course yes”.

“He later denied it. Perhaps he forgot. But I remember”, Talat went on. We know that when he came back from Burgenstock he persuaded his Political Bureau to vote yes and criticised Papadopoulos for saying that the Anan plan was partition. Then at the Central Committee they said that I had said that we would not implement the plan. Now that was a big lie and they used it for propaganda to excuse their change of stance”.

Talat also gave his view on the natural gas issue. He said he believes that all the island’s natural resources belong to both communities, as was in the Anan plan. “This is a fair position”, he said. “But you are wrong to think that the nationalists on our side want a portion of the gas. They don’t. They want boundaries. What’s in the south let the Greek Cypriots have, what’s in the north the Turkish Cypriots. That’s their position. Me, I don’t want borders, neither on land nor in the sea”.

Cyprus problem about to blow up

While everyone on the island is focused on Mari and its aftermath, important developments are coming in a few weeks time that will determine the outcome of the talks and the future of the island, with Cyprus soon having to face ultimate partition, says Makarios Droushiotis writing in Politis today.

At a meeting recently in New York the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Philip Gordon, urged Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Erato Markoulli, to come up with ideas to face the forthcoming developments because it is expected that the Turkish side will aim to upgrade the TRNC in such a way as to make reunification impossible.

The forthcoming meetings on 30 and 31 October may very likely be the end of the road for the talks only this time there won’t be another round of talks with federation as a basis.

A UN source told the paper that what is at stake is whether the Cyprus problem can be solved on the basis of a bizonal bicommunal federation as has been sought since 1974 or whether this has now become impossible with whatever that may entail.

The UN’s roadmap since before Mari has been:
1. Discussion of all chapters (done)
2. Give and take till 20 October (started on Friday)
3. New tripartite meeting (to be held on 30 and 31 October)
4. International conference towards the end of the year (doubtful)

Since then, however, Christofias’ standing amongst the population has totally been shot, falling to 20%, the lowest ever.

The UN had hoped at first that the Mari events would prove to be an incentive rather than an obstacle for a solution. But after the Polyviou report and the almost universal loss of confidence in the President by the whole of society (with the exception of the hard core of Akel), noone has the illusion that the talks can possibly conclude with a conference.

Friday was the start of the ‘give and take’ phase of the talks. According to reliable sources, President Christofias started off by outlining the internal problems he was facing, the House of Representatives’ decision to discuss the Polyviou report and emphasised the difficulty he had in participating in a ‘give and take’ process. His contribution at the table was similar to his reaction afterwards when in statements to the press he said he’d had it ‘up to here’ with the attacks of the parties and that in any case no ‘give and take’ had taken place.

The truth lies somewhere between the statements of the UN Special Representative in Cyprus, Lisa Buttenheim, who said that they had “entered a new phase” and that of Christofias, who said no give and take had taken place, in other words the process has indeed entered a new phase but nothing substantial has been achieved. The leaders wasted a large part of their time reading documents.

The writer says that it is doubtful that this last phase in Nicosia will result in anything with the two sides having different expectations from the New York meeting. President Christofias wants the meeting to take place but to be just a repeat of all the previous ones, namely an evaluation of the talks and their continuation in Nicosia. The Turkish side wants the New York meeting to be conclusive as was agreed in July and for the UN to allocate responsibility for their failure.

According to Turkish sources, the Assistant UN Secretary-General has assured the Turkish side on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly that the procedure will climax and will end either with a solution or total collapse. This seems to be the position of Alexander Downer, who will push the two sides to make a final and effective give and take.

President Christofias’ internal problems don’t affect the UN’s plans, besides there has never been a lack of problems on either side and nor has Christofias’ contribution been any different when he was in full control of the internal situation. It’s up to the leaders to evaluate the timing, a foreign diplomatic source told the paper.