Ban faux pas?

Greek Cypriot political parties yesterday were up in arms over UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments that the talks had been suspended because of “a change of government in the Greek Cypriot community of Cyprus” and the economic crisis.

In the eyes of politicians Ban managed in one sentence to ‘blame’ the Greek Cypriots for a delay in negotiations, and to ‘downgrade’ Cyprus from a UN member state to a mere ‘community’, the Cyprus Mail reports.

However, the government’s response was muted. Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said the remarks were ‘unfounded’, firstly because the talks stopped before June 2012 when Cyprus took over the six-month EU presidency due to the Turkish Cypriot side’s ire. Secondly, when the presidency ended in December that year, the government was six weeks away from presidential elections, and it was again the Turkish side which said it was not worth re-starting talks with then President Demetris Christofias who was not standing for re-election.

As far as being a ‘community’, Kasoulides said: “I am wondering how many years a Secretary-General needs to be in the post before he knows the number of UN member states there are.”

“I would like to believe that these statements were not made deliberately,” he said, suggesting Ban was too busy with other issues that was not paying attention. If he had, “he would have avoided these mistakes.”

In an editorial the Cyprus Mail says it was predictable that nobody focused on the substance of the Secretary-General’s statement, namely that the two sides had agreed on most areas of the joint declaration and were very close.

The paper says that that was perhaps the real reason for the angry reaction to what was a genuine mistake by Ban, who has much more important and urgent issues taking up his time than the Cyprus problem. But nobody it seems is too keen on the start of talks which is why they seized the opportunity to engage in the negativity they are all familiar and comfortable with, the paper concludes.