Cyprob is back

1. Anastasiades says he had asked to see document

President Nicos Anastasiades yesterday said he was the one who had asked to see the UN document on the convergences and divergences between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the Cyprus problem between 2008 and 2012, the Cyprus Mail reports. 


Some political parties have interpreted the document as an attempt to lock in convergences and force Greek Cypriots into unacceptable concessions.

But Anastasiades said yesterday in a written statement that he had requested to see the report “not, of course, to use it as a basis of restarting negotiations from where they left off but so the Greek Cypriot side can be able to know… in a substantiated and serious way how it can withdraw any proposals the majority of the people and political leaders find unacceptable”.


Anastasiades said although he was keen to re-launch peace talks as soon as possible, the government was now focused on tackling “the problems the present economic crisis has accumulated”. Everyone involved, including the United Nations, understands that, Anastasiades said. 


“At the same time I consider confrontations to be unnecessary and pointless since a new national council meeting has been set for June 15,” he said.

Matters that have been pigeonholed for discussion during the meeting include deciding on a negotiator and coming up with a framework for proposals as well as deciding on the format of a new round of talks, Anastasiades said. 


DIKO leader and coalition partner Marios Garoyian said yesterday the UN document cannot serve as a foundation for peace talks. “It is merely an informal departmental document by the UN team on the Cyprus problem, no more,” he said. But he expressed concern the report gave the impression of “a complete solution plan”. That may be a sneaky way of presenting a ready-made draft solution for discussion during peace talks in an effort to limit them in only the divergences, risking “trapping our side in as many possible ‘convergences’ made between 2008-2012,” Garoyian said.


House President and EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou repeated yesterday his view that Greek Cypriots should not accept the UN document as “an interim agreement in the context of continuing Cyprus problem negotiations”. 
But former ruling party AKEL that was in power during the time referenced in the document warned via its spokesman George Loucaides that a clean slate endangered a “significant risk” for Anastasiades who would be tasked with accomplishing something better. The UN document is not a solution proposal, Loucaides said. “Nothing is considered to be agreed on unless everything is agreed,” he added.

2. Coffeeshop

Rejoice, rejoice and hallelujah, the Cyprob is back, says the Cyprus Mail’s satirical column, Coffeeshop. Everyone’s favourite problem has returned to our sun-kissed shores, putting the smile back on our politicians’ faces after some very difficult months, giving our freedom-fighters a reason to get out of bed in the morning and setting off the flow of the sexual juices of our journalists. I thought I would never say this but, like everyone else, I missed it and for a while I was anxious that it would never come back.

Existence was empty and meaningless in the last 12 months, the Cyprob had disappeared from our lives replaced by the all-destroying economic problems and the malicious presence of the troikans, compared to whom Big Bad Al is a cuddly teddy-bear. The Eurogroup meetings, the troika, Delia and Dijsselbloem made us appreciate the benign nature of the Cyprob and its kindly protagonists that never punished our heroic defiance, public posturing, delaying tactics, legalistic hair-splitting and resounding ‘nos’ to everything like our nasty EU partners had done.


The Cyprob is the game we all love to play because we always win – we always achieve our objective of no deal – and that is the reason we want to keep playing. It is no wonder that after the crushing defeats and humiliations we suffered in the last couple of months, the return of our number one national problem was welcomed like manna from heaven by everyone.

For a while we thought that it would never arrive. Big Bad Al visited, had meetings with the two leaders, travelled to Greece and Turkey, arranged a dinner for May 29, made some statements but failed to spark any interest. This was followed by Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides’ visit to the US where he met the UN chief and American Secretary of State, John Kerry, whom he supposedly persuaded to treat the Cyprob, our economic woes and natural gas as three separate issues; it is what the CyBC correspondent triumphantly reported. The problem still failed to take centre stage despite the zealous efforts of its salesmen in the media who were warning about foreign efforts to link the three issues and ultimately force ‘the speedy closure of the problem’.

Nothing, apart from AKEL, inspires as much stupidity as the Cyprob.
 The warnings did not spark any hysteria and neither did Wednesday’s six-hour National Council circus, which discussed the prob as well as the economy and featured a special guest appearance by comrade Gaaaros, not as an economics expert but as an achaparos former president.
 A white lie told by the current president, tricky Nicky, to the party bosses paved the way for the triumphant return of the Cyprob to our lives. He told them that there was nothing to report, an innocent lie, considering he was in possession of Al’s 70-page document with the convergences achieved in the talks.

Unfortunately, on Thursday, a loser Turkish Cypriot politician, who acts like an AKEL mascot and is in charge of a Mickey-mouse party in the north called United Kibris, spilled the fasoulia. 
After a meeting with his commie comrade Andros, Izzet Izdjan revealed that the UN had handed over a ‘document work-plan’ to Dervis Eroglu and it was being translated. Explanations were demanded by the Akelites and the government spokesman said the government had only received the document on that day, which was a bit of a lie. The document had been handed over by Al a while ago but there had been an agreement with tricky Nicky not to make its existence public. After all, there was nothing in it that was not known but our president had to have an official UN document recording the convergences reached in the talks by his predecessor.
 However, the fact that he kept it a secret made a mega-boring matter – could anything be more boring than a 70-page document with the convergences of the talks – sexy for our politicians, hacks and TV bosses. Their love-juices started to flow again as they now had a compelling reason to put our beloved problem on centre stage. The doom and gloom was lifted as our opinion formers were gripped by sweet-natured paranoia and suspicion once again. AKEL asked why Eroglu had received the document many days before our side and why Nik had not mentioned the existence of it at the National Council meeting. Would he have announced its receipt if Izdjan had said nothing about it? The fuss did not amount to a hill of fasoulia but was enough get the Cyprob’s homecoming party going.

On Friday morning all radio shows had upbeat politicians moaning about the latest outrage by the UN and Big Bad Al, while Phil’s banner headline spoke about the ‘Downer document bomb’. In the evening, the CyBC’s main TV news reported that the document ‘provoked turmoil.’ But ‘even bigger turmoil’ was caused by the letter sent by tricky Nicky to Ban Ki-moon complaining about Al’s attempt to turn the May 29 dinner into a political meeting and threatening not attending. 
Even Nik wanted to play the Cyprob game. He had never in the past publicly attacked Al but now decided to join in the fun. Had he been advised to write the letter by his partners, the DIKO Downer destroyers? How was the Aussie trying to turn the dinner from a social to a political dinner? Was he going to force Nik to sign an unfair settlement while he was waiting for his dessert? I suspect, although he did not mention in it in his letter to Ban, Nik was upset by the release of the UN document, which made him look a liar, as Al had agreed to keep its existence out of the public domain. But was it the Aussie’s fault that AKEL’s Turkish Cypriot mascot found out about the document and informed his commie masters?

Bash-patriots took the president’s letter as a cue to renew their old calls for the immediate replacement of Big Bad Al who had proved beyond any doubt that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Turk-lover scheming to politicise a social event. Even Lillikas added his voice to the calls for the Al’s axing. The Cyprob is back with a vengeance. It made you wonder where all these brave freedom fighters were hiding when the IMF’s deleterious Delia was imposing terms guaranteed to wreck our economy for years. I do not recall hearing any of them publicly demanding the IMF immediately replace her and send someone less nasty to negotiate the bailout, which caused much more harm to the country than Al’s boring document ever would. This is why we love our Cyprob so much. It allows our politicians to show how brave they really are.

Another good reason for being angry with Al and the UN was their choice of date for the Nik-Derv dinner. It was May 29, the date of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. 
The 560th anniversary of the fall of Byzantium’s capital to the bloodthirsty Turkish hordes was a provocatively insensitive date, as the Lazaros Patriotic show reminded its listeners every day in the last week, insisting that this was no day to have dinner with Eroglu. 
His rants worked, the presidential palace asking for a re-scheduling of the dinner. Although the Turks initially refused, we hear that the dinner has been moved to May 30. Don’t be surprised if Eroglu asks for another date because it is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of London, officially ending the First Balkan War in which Turkey was resoundingly defeated by Greece and Serbia.

3. Our ‘heroic’ No’s have cost us dear

Nicos Rolandis, former Foreign Minister and Commerce Minister, MP and president of the Liberal Party, writing in the Cyprus Mail says that almost all the assessments and decisions we reached over the years were proved wrong. Unable to tell the difference between real heroism, which difficult national decisions require, and the heroic stupidity of populism, we upgraded the word “No” to a symbol of heroism, ruining our country and our lives.
 

Between 1948 and 1958 we had four proposals for solving the Cyprus problem, which were all better than what ensued: Consultative Assembly (1948), Harding Proposals (1955-56), Ratcliffe Constitution (1956) and the Macmillan Plan (1958). We shouted “No” to all of them. We opted for armed struggle with enosis (Union with Greece) as its aim, an aim Greece herself had not approved. We had great, really heroic acts during the struggle, but the objective was not achieved. Amongst other things, we caused the uprising of the Turkish minority in Cyprus (18 per cent of the population), which until then had been satisfied with a “second violin” role as long as their rights were safeguarded. We gave them power and status and we converted them into a “community”. So, we ended up in 1960 with the Zurich-London Agreements and the Republic of Cyprus. And we cried out with joy: “We have won”. Then in 1963, we said “No” to this joyous achievement. We committed the fatal blunder of pursuing a revision of the 1960 Constitution on very sensitive issues touching upon the rights of the Turkish Cypriots (and against the advice of Greece). We thus planted the seeds of partition. The period 1963-1974 was rife with “Nos” to logic as we aimed for the unattainable. Repeatedly, we went after enosis again, contravening the constitution.

Turkey started threatening “invasion” in 1965. Finally, in 1974 came the Greek and Greek Cypriot coup d’état, which fully opened the gate for the Turkish invasion. This happened despite the many theories that Turkey could not invade because we were a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, a member of the Council of Europe, a member of the Non-Aligned, and a country which had signed in 1972 an Association Agreement with the European Communities (EEC). It had never occurred to our leaders, that this is a world where “interests” and “power”, not “principles”, prevail. We thus lost more than one third of our country. From 1978 to 2004 we shouted “No” to all important initiatives to solve our problem (which were getting worse and worse as time went by): the Anglo-American-Canadian Plan (1978), the Indicators (1983), the Consolidated Documents (1985-6), the Set of Ideas (1992), the Troutbeck-Glion Initiative (1997), and the Annan Plan (2002-4). In short, we ourselves buried the Cyprus problem. With our “No” to the 1983 (Indicators), we paved the way for the unilateral declaration of the Turkish Cypriot “state”.

We had many warnings. But our leaders paid no heed. Between 1996 and1998 and with the active involvement of Greece, we said “No” to logic by ignoring Turkish military supremacy and ordered the S300 missiles. We eventually wasted 270m dollars on the missiles, which now rest in peace after having been thrown away on the mountains of Crete.


In 2000-2001 we said “No” to the rules of the economy and the markets as we created a stock market “bubble”. When it burst, the financial and social balances of the country were turned upside down. From 2008 to 2012 we racked up a fiscal deficit of more than €6 billion, through non-existent financial planning. Our banks lost €4.5 billion on the Greek government bonds and €5 billion were transferred to Greece, which were used for uncollateralised loans. We lost our credibility, which is now equivalent to junk. We were thrown out of the markets. “Looking proudly ahead” we said “No” to the basic rules of economics and blew up our country. And our European partners, acting unprecedentedly fiercely, gave us the coup de grace.  


Roman politician and thinker Cicero once stated: “To stumble twice on the same stone is a great shame”. We have stumbled more than 20 times on that same stone in the past 60 years.
 When the search for our dreams began, I was 20 years old. Today I am 78. Now that I have reached my golden years, I would like to give one more a piece of advice about the dangers emanating from natural gas.  
Natural gas constitutes huge wealth with a probable value of hundreds of billions of dollars. It is a blessing, which may turn into a curse if we are not careful. Let’s not forget that most wars today are linked to oil and gas.  
Turkey has been threatening for many years. She invokes the rights of the Turkish Cypriots and the fact that she has not signed and is not bound by the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982.   
We invoke our sovereign rights, which are recognised by all countries. But we were invoking these very same rights in 1974, and had their recognition by all countries, yet nobody stopped the invasion or extended a helping hand.

Forty years have elapsed since then, and not a single square kilometre out of the 3,500 occupied by Turkey was ever returned to us. 
Furthermore, we should not forget the continuous admonitions we have had from Europeans, Americans, Russians and others, that we should not overlook the rights of the Turkish Cypriots. The most recent statement came from our friend the foreign minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, who said on April 17:  “Any exploitation of the natural resources must be based on consent, so that all Cypriots, without any exception will benefit”.


I am not presenting a fictitious risk. I am a realist. Nor am I suggesting that we should negotiate under pressure. I am simply suggesting that we should not put up another heroic “No”, because I am afraid that we shall pay for it much more dearly than ever before. We must not stumble once more. We should use natural gas as a catalyst in the effort to solve the problem of Cyprus and probably the wider problems of Greece and Turkey as well.

I would repeat the words of General Themistocles to Admiral Eurybiades, in 480 BC before the sea battle of Salamis: “Hit me but listen to me.”