Van Rompuy was speaking in Ankara where he met with
Turkey’s top officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“As a candidate negotiating EU-membership, Turkey’s ties
to the union are already very strong. ... After a moment of standstill, this
commitment will give a new impetus and will soon be translated into a concrete
step forward. And I am confident other such concrete steps will follow. The
accession negotiations are the main driver in our relationship,” van Rompuy told
the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).
On energy, van Rompuy said the bloc had a common interest
in improving access to energy resources, particularly from the Caspian Sea and
Central Asia. “At a time of growing demand worldwide, diversifying supply
sources are a must, be it from conventional or renewable energy. Given our
common energy challenges, increasing our cooperation in energy matters is
desirable. That’s why European commissioners and Turkish Ministers last year
agreed to deepen our energy relations in several ways.”
He also said it was essential to find a solution to the Cyprus
problem, adding that the discovery of gas reserves could be an incentive for peaceful
reconciliation.
“When looking into the Cyprus issue, I see a striking
parallel with European history. The historic reconciliation between France and
Germany after many wars was built on the idea of sharing coal; coal and steel,
the war-fuelling products, stood at the basis of the European project. In one
brilliant move, political leaders on both sides turned around a situation,
changing a mutual threat into a common opportunity”, he said.
“As I said one year ago in the Parliament in Nicosia:
switching gas for coal, this could be beneficial for both communities in Cyprus
and the Cyprus problem may be solved”, he added. “We, as the European Union, we
fully support a solution in accordance with relevant UN Security Council
resolutions”.
Dinner will go ahead on 30 May
The dinner for President Anastasiades and Dervis
Eroglu hosted by the UN Secretary-General’s special representative Alexander
Downer will go ahead as planned even though the date has reportedly been
switched to May 30, according to the press.
It will supposedly remain of a social nature, as
Anastasiades had demanded in a letter he sent to Ban Ki-moon last Friday.
According to a written statement issued by the Cyprus
Government Spokesman, Christos Stylianides, the Chef de Cabinet of the UN
Secretary-General, Mrs Susana Malcorra, gave the appropriate reassurances on
behalf of the Secretary General regarding the dinner in response to President Anastasiades’
letter.
In his letter the president had complained that Downer
had tried to turn the dinner into a political event despite having given
assurances to the contrary. He felt that Downer’s associates “had leaked to
unauthorised individuals inaccurate information, with the result of the
undermining of our credibility and the creation of the mistaken impression
about the resumption of the peace talks.”
Anastasiades giving more ammunition to opponents of a settlement
An editorial in the Cyprus Mail says perhaps there
were other goings-on that were not specified in Anastasiades’ letter, but even
if there were, they could not justify the knee-jerk reaction and brash tone of
the letter.
The strange thing was, the paper says, that
Anastasiades had always enjoyed a very good relationship with Downer, meeting
regularly with him and never participating in the concerted attacks on the
Australian by all other parties and leaders. Did he feel obliged to adopt a
more confrontational approach now he was president, or was he trying to keep
his rejectionist alliance partners happy?
His angry reaction may have had something to do with
the revelations that he was in possession of a 77-page UN document, listing the
convergences and divergences of the talks, about which he had kept the National
Council in the dark. Perhaps he thought that sending an angry letter was the
best way to shift public attention away from this omission, which the
opposition parties took exception to. This would also explain why he made his
letter public on the very same day he sent it, probably before anyone at the UN
headquarters had read it.
Making the letter public gave the impression he was playing
to the gallery rather than voicing legitimate concerns. If he had concerns
these should have been conveyed to Ban in a confidential letter. By going
public, he sparked another bout of Downer-bashing by the political parties and
calls for the Australian’s replacement. While this will not happen, after the
four years of work Downer and his team had put into the peace efforts, all the
president’s letter achieved was to give more ammunition to the campaign of
opponents of a settlement.
It was not a smart move, if he remains committed to
reaching a deal.
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