Talks to start on Tuesday, UN says

The UN announced yesterday that the leaders of the two communities in Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and Dervis Eroglu will meet in the United Nations protected area of Nicosia at the Good Offices Mission on Tuesday at 11.30am.

The Cyprus Mail quotes diplomatic sources as saying that there are no plans, at this stage, for Alexander Downer, the UN’s special envoy, to make it to Cyprus in time for Tuesday’s first meeting, according to diplomatic sources.

“Downer, the UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on Cyprus, is not scheduled to come for now,” the sources told the paper.

The UN will be represented by Chief of Mission and UN Secretary General’s Representative in Cyprus Lisa Buttenheim.

“The meeting will give the two leaders the chance to sit down together officially for the first time since negotiations broke off a year and a half ago. Not too much will be discussed other than determining point number eight on the joint statement,” the sources said.

Point eight of the joint statement has been left open to give the leaders the chance to announce topics other than those covered in the previous seven points.

Government spokesman Christos Stylianides said on Saturday that within the joint communiqué it is clear that there is no possibility of secession, something the president insisted on.

“Those claiming that there is a provision for two separate sovereignties are mistaken. It is also clear that there is no issue within the joint communiqué regarding arbitration from other countries,” he said.

The government spokesman added that it is possible that the political parties have most likely not fully read the statement, causing some of them to react so negatively.

He echoed Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ comments on Friday that there needs to be national unity, adding that the government will do whatever is in its power to make sure there will not be a divisive atmosphere on the island.

“We will all be together for this difficult negotiation and despite any disagreements the president would like to continue with the consent of all the political powers all of which can contribute,” he said.

Stylianides added that Anastasiades truly appreciated the responsible stance of opposition AKEL and especially the statement made on Friday by the party’s Secretary General Andros Kyprianou that he would keep a responsible attitude regardless of the political cost.

Stavros Malas, former health minister and AKEL’s presidential candidate in last year’s elections, yesterday said he would support Anastasiades during the negotiation process as he felt it is Cyprus’ last chance to find a solution.

Malas said that the circumstances favour an assertive policy.

“No-one’s shoulders are broad enough to carry this burden and even those who disagree have a role to play but the president should not be weakened in this struggle because we have seen the results in the past,” he said.

Describing it as a historic moment, Malas said “we should not be fighting for political vindication but the vindication of our country, because if the president fails then it is Cyprus which will lose.”

Small countries need bold policies and political stature to effectively assert their geostrategic role, the former health minister said.

AKEL’s political office yesterday called on all the political parties to rise to the occasion through cooperation and understanding.

Speaking at a press conference party spokesman Giorgos Loucaides said the party had decided to support the negotiations and called on the president to be consistent in principles of a settlement.

Online newspaper Newzup.net speculates that the talks will last 18 months. It notes that Eroglu’s term expires in May 2015, which means that the talks will end after he leaves office. Newzup says that in truth, the Presidential Palace does not expect to have opposite them someone with whom they can communicate and are talking about “parallel and un-crossed positions” for the duration of his term.

Newzup says that the US have a broader plan behind this related to their handling of the various countries in the broader East Mediterranean region. Washington believes that the deposits of natural gas opens great possibilities. A lot depends on the solution of the Cyprus problem because without it Turkey cannot take advantage as it will make a pipeline from Israel through Cyprus to Turkey practically impossible. It will be just as hard to construct a natural gas terminal at Vasiliko together with Israel unless the Cyprus problem is solved.

Another positive development, Newzup says, is the replacement of Osman Ertug with Kudret Ozersai as Turkish Cypriot negotiator. Ozersay has a long involvement with the Cyprus problem having been on Mehmet Ali Talat’s team as well as earlier on Eroglu’s team. Newzup says this is a clear indication of the weakening of the Turkish side’s positions, as Ozersay is considered far more moderate than Ertug. Ozersay also has close relations with circles in the EU Commission and the Council of Europe.

Upheaval in DIKO

There is upheaval within DIKO, says online newspaper Nezup.net, as thousands of the party’s supporters who are opposed to the party withdrawing from the government over the joint communique before the talks even start. 

The paper says some are doing so for various reasons, some because they supported the incumbent Marios Garoyian, some because they believe that enough is enough and it’s time for a solution (a DIKO poll has shown that many fall in this category), others because they feel the party will be ridiculed if they continuously leave the coalition government they helped to elect. There’s even talk now of setting up an ‘original DIKO’ which harks back to the good old DIKO of ol that was full of moderates who supported a federal solution as per the Makarios and Kyprianou high level agreements, and leaving this rejectionist DIKO  to Papadopoulos.

According to the paper’s sources, three of the four DIKO ministers are considering remaining in their positions if the part decides to withdraw. What finally happens depends a lot on the outcome of the internal party elections being held this weekend.

Meanwhile, the paper says, Papadopoulos is having second thoughts as to whether to leave before talks start or not. This was as a result of the views he has been hearing from consultations he’s been having with party members. In any case he will decide after the internal party elections.

The Cyprus Mail says that the internal elections to internal party posts will decide whether Papadopoulos’ win over Garoyian is cemented with the ouster of the latter’s supporters.

Until last week, all the signs indicated that the Papadopoulos camp was headed towards an easy win. But then came the joint communiqué which caused an uproar in the ranks of the hardliners, of whom Papadopoulos is considered an unofficial leader.

Papadopoulos believes that the promise the president had given DIKO before the 2013 presidential elections, that the Annan plan was “dead and buried”, and that “the Annan plan in any form won’t be put back on the table”, has been broken. He warned the president that if he signed the communique and started talks, his party would dissolve the governing coalition.

Anastasiades’ response was defiant. Knowing full well that party elections were to be held this Sunday, the president extended a formal invitation to Garoyian to come to the palace. They didn’t say what they discussed. Neither of them made any public statements, but the message was loud and clear. Papadopoulos was no longer considered a friend and the Presidential Palace believes DIKO has another leader on standby.

Marcos Kyprianou, son of Spyros Kyprianou is staging a political comeback after his involvement in the Mari naval blast incident (he was foreign minister at the time) and is a friend of neither of the two DIKO leaders.

Kyprianou still wields a heavy bat in the Limassol district, where he has a lot of support. Kyprianou is up for deputy head and is considered a favourite for the position. A rising Kyprianou would surely be a threat for Papadopoulos, who is now seeing his opponents grow in number.

In addition to asserting his authority, Papadopoulos needs a victory by a large margin for another reason. Under internal regulations, he and the central committee cannot just decide to break away from the government. And if he takes the issue to a vote and loses it, or even wins but by a small margin, it will spell the end of Papadopoulos.

If Garoyian garners enough support he could easily divide DIKO, take half the party with him and open for them a host of government positions in the Anastasiades government, previously held by Papadopoulos supporters. The palace of course would welcome such a move, as it will cripple the largest party within the “denialists” front.

Anastasiades is expected to take a lot of heat in the coming months, and having the party that traditionally led the charge against a compromise with the Turkish Cypriot leadership divided, would be a major relief for the government

Energy and alliances behind US involvement

An editorial in the Cyprus Mail expresses surprise that despite our love for conspiracy theories, nothing was made of the leading part played by the Americans in the latest diplomatic efforts to get the Cyprus talks started after years of indifference. Without the direct involvement of the US government it is doubtful we would have had this week’s breakthrough on the joint declaration which had eluded the two sides for four months.

Nobody has asked why the US has been showing such interest suddenly, the paper says. The game-changer has been the discovery of hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean, the exploitation of which requires regional stability and regional co-operation. A settlement would contribute to this as it paves the way for joint ventures in which Turkey, Israel and Cyprus would participate. The simplistic plans for a Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt energy alliance to counter Turkey – advanced by the hard-line nationalists at the Cyprus foreign ministry – have been exposed as utter nonsense.

The US would not have undertaken the initiative for a settlement if it did not serve Israel’s interests. Israel-Turkey relations have improved significantly in recent months, Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology for the Mavi Marmara incident and this week’s deal for compensation by Israel of the victims were an example of the steps taken; El Al will resume flights to Turkey which were stopped in 2007 over security disagreements. This gradual normalisation of relations has allowed companies from the two countries to discuss the possibility of establishing an underground pipeline taking natural gas from Israel’s Leviathan field to Turkey. This may explain Noble Energy’s loss of interest in the setting up of a costly LNG terminal at Vassilikos – if Israel does not use it would it not be viable – and, together with its partner Delek, having talks with Turkish energy companies.

A solution, the paper concludes, would be part of grander designs aimed at bringing America’s two closest allies in the region into a strategic, mutually beneficial partnership, that may also act as a counter to Russia’s growing influence.

Coffeeshop

It was a fantastic week for our freedom-fighter politicians, says the Cyprus Mail’s satirical column Coffeeshop, as they were handed one excuse after another to show off their death-defying bravery, moral superiority, principled negativity and total lack of originality. The column says it was very disappointed that not one of our brave politicians had called for the immediate removal of the Turkophile Ban from his post, after uttering these lies that the interruption in the talks on the “change of government in the Greek Cypriot community of Cyprus”, inviting a verbal onslaught by our freedom-fighters.

This ‘slip’ was a ‘thunderbolt from the blue’, a ‘distortion of the truth’, a ‘blow to our state standing’ a ‘downgrading of the state to a community’, and, according to Ethnarch Junior, who could not hide his ‘bitterness and disappointment’, indicative that the ‘stage was being set up for pressure for concessions to be applied on the Greek Cypriots’. The Eurococks and EDEK said that Big Bad Al was behind Ban’s comments while our foreign minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, feeling obliged to join the party, wondered how long a UNSG had to be in his post to know all the UN’s member states.

The real fun began after Prez Nik invited the party leaders to the palazzo to inform them that a joint declaration had been agreed and that the talks were set to resume. Junior urged Nik not to agree to the communiqué and even took a document interpreting the joint declaration in the most extremely negative way possible, as if to prove he was a worthy upholder of his late father’s legacy of cartoon negativity.

On Friday the resistance fighters were competing over who would come up with the most freakishly scary interpretation of the declaration. We heard that there would be ‘three-headed sovereignty’ (EDEK), triple citizenship (DIKO), ‘a return to the Annan plan’ and of course the dreaded, ‘virgin birth of the state’ was back on the agenda.

The negotiations had not even begun and our loser politicians, like the chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy had gone into a lament about doom ahead.

The worst of the lot has been Junior, also known as The Prince of Darkness, who wants the Cyprob to remain open forever because this best serves his career interests. He is after all the leader of a party that stands for two things – negativity on the Cypob marketed as high principle and corruption.

Take away the Cyprob and the party would stand only for rusfeti which is its true character, but it needs to maintain some pretence of public worth. The Prince tried to persuade prez Nik to agree to talks but to deal with procedural aspect that would lead nowhere. “That’s what my father would have done,” he proudly told Nik, unable to hide his admiration for his dad’s political dishonesty that combined with his negativity made him a great leader.