40th anniversary

Negotiators meet for nine hours

The two negotiators of the Cyprus problem, Andreas Mavroyiannis and Kudret Ozersay, earlier this week had an unscheduled meeting that lasted 9 hours during which they prepared the ground for the next meeting between the two leaders Anastasiades and Eroglu on 24 July.

In a statement to the Cyprus News Agency, the government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said they had discussed confidence building measures and the next steps in the process.

Coffeeshop

What can you say on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that has not already been said? Could anything be written that would not be utterly tedious, boring and clichéd and not come across as a send-up, says Coffeeshop, the Cyprus Mail’s satirical column.

I could write that we will continue our unyielding struggle for the liberation of every single village in the occupied area and the return of all refugees to their homes, but customers would think I had a screw loose.

Not even our courageously defiant politicians make such statements nowadays, preferring to talk about a fair and just settlement that would be achieved with a minimum of struggle and preferably without the need of negotiations with the intransigent Turks who, in contrast to us, have never been consumed by the burning desire for a settlement.

The Turks might pretend they want a settlement but their real objective is partition along the current dividing line which they have achieved without our politicians noticing because they had been too busy putting up a brave resistance to the Turkish designs and thwarting Anglo-American plots to impose suffocating time-frame on talks.

Meanwhile our illustrious party leaders decided to mark the 40th anniversary of the invasion by putting together a new strategy for the liberation of the occupied parts. Monday’s National Council meeting agreed that all the leaders would submit proposals for a new strategy when they meet again in September.

What new strategy these slogan salesmen will come up with is anyone’s guess, but I suspect they would agree on the re-branding and re-marketing of the Cyprob as an issue of invasion and occupation rather than as a bi-communal dispute, because this would help our unyielding struggle to go on for a few more years.

An even more radical strategy change would be for Prez Nik to put in a request to the UN Security Council to stop negotiating for settlement with the Turks and choose another country. For instance, we could negotiate for solution with the Maltese who are much more reasonable chaps than the Turks and are unlikely to demand political equality and rotating presidency because their army – if they have one – would be even more pathetic than ours.

This is the new strategy our leaders should be exploring as it would greatly improve the prospects of a fair and viable solution, so long as the devious foreign powers do not use the Maltese factor to press for a speedy closure of the Cyprob.