Leaders’ meeting today

The leaders of the two communities, Anastasiades and Eroglu will be meeting this morning in what Politis newspaper describes as a ‘crucial’ meeting as regards the course of the talks.

They are expected to discuss issues related to the negotiating process and confidence building measures.

According to the Cyprus Government Spokesman, the aim of the meeting is to overcome the difficulties that have come up at this phase and for there to be positive outcomes before the summer break.

The current agenda of the talks was finalized yesterday at a meeting between the two negotiators, Mavrogianni and Ozersay, and the UN Special Representative in Cyprus, Lisa Buttenheim.

The two leaders will also be paying a visit to the laboratory investigating cases of missing persons.

Mavrogiannis and Ozersay discussed economic issues, security and guarantees, the relationship between the federal government and the federal states and the relation between independent and federal government officials. The spokesman told Cyprus News Agency that the two sides submitted documents on aspects of the Cyprus problem that had not yet been submitted.

According to Kathimerini newspaper of Cyprus, in statements after the meeting, Kudret Ozersai said that the Turkish Cypriot side had submitted a document on territorial adjustments, without submitting maps or quotas. He said they had agreed to discuss maps and quotas at the final stage of the talks and that the document they submitted took that into account. 

He also said that they didn’t view the Greek Cypriot proposal on a system of security and guarantees coming from the Security Council as realistic, nor did he think that the Greek Cypriot side themselves truly believed in it.

He said that the two sides had honoured their commitment to submit proposals on all issues.

He said that Anastasiades and Eroglu will be discussing the second phase of the talks, but that they would also have to take decisions on the third phase, something the negotiators had also discussed.

He said the aim of the leaders’ visit to the missing persons committee laboratory was to appeal to all who have information on missing persons to come forward.

Living with the fait accompli we so vehemently decry

In an editorial on the 40th anniversary of the Turkish invasion, the Cyprus Mail says that for almost three-quarters of its existence as a sovereign state, the Republic has had more than a third of its territory occupied by Turkey.

It says that a sizable proportion of the population has never known Cyprus without a dividing line and for whom the official slogan – ‘I don’t forget’ – is meaningless as they have no memories of the north. In another 10 years, reminiscing about Kyrenia or the Karpas will be an old age pensioner’s pastime.

Our politicians may still be talking about their desire for a settlement and condemning Turkish intransigence as preventing reunification in 10 years time but nobody will be listening.

The Cyprus problem industry, which has made many political careers, cannot last forever. Its best days are in the past and its peak – the 2004 referendum hysteria – was 10 years ago. It has been in decline ever since as a vote-winner and career-maker. People are not just fed up of listening to the same old nonsense from dishonest politicians they no longer care.

The reality is that, despite the rhetoric, the overwhelming majority of people seem comfortable with the status quo and have accepted the division as part of their life; we suspect the Turkish Cypriots think the same way. Why would people want reunification when the four decades of separation offered uninterrupted peace and security, in stark contrast to the period before 1974 which was plagued by intercommunal fighting and bloodshed?

This is the thinking behind our politicians’ fiery rhetoric about a settlement being fair, just, viable, workable, respecting all human rights etc. They know they are in no position to achieve this utopia, but they keep banging on about it, because they are afraid to say that permanent partition is, for them, the best of all options. They are happy to achieve it through their childish, patriotic stance that rejects every compromise proposal for the chimera of the perfect settlement.

Partition has another big benefit for our political establishment – it ensures against the anathema of power-sharing. Greek Cypriot politicians do not want to share the spoils of power they have been enjoying for decades with Turkish Cypriots and operate in a system that would impose unprecedented checks and balances on them.

It is no coincidence that the last two presidents, both supposedly pro-settlement, in practice, have not been too committed to achieving a deal because they do not want to surrender their power or have it curtailed by a new constitution.

In 40 years of division the only major change that has taken place in relations between the two sides has been the opening of the checkpoints in 2003 by the Turkish Cypriot leadership. In the 11 years since there has been no violence or any major incident and many thousands of people now visit the other side routinely, without fear. This showed that the two communities could live peacefully as good neighbours, but it is also an indication that this might be as far as they are prepared to go.

There would be many, big opportunities for a settlement that did away with the dividing line and reunited the island but nobody is prepared to make the big leap of faith because partition seems to suit both sides, not only the Turkish Cypriots.

Despite the brave and defiant words about never accepting the fait accompli of the invasion, the Greek Cypriot politicians have done exactly that as the facts of the last 40 years show, and not many people have been protesting.

After all, the objective is no longer reunification but the preservation of the Cyprus Republic, even if the cost is to surrender 37 per cent of its territory to Turkey.

The inane ramblings of our political parties

The Cyprus Mail in an editorial refers to the government’s plan to introduce the teaching about federation to the secondary school curriculum on political systems.

The paper says certain parties issued statements slamming the plan. While Education Minister Costas Kadis spoke said in a radio interview that the ministry wanted to broaden the curriculum so that students were made aware of the political systems used in different countries, and that these lessons would have nothing to do with the Cyprus issue, this did not reassure the parties.

They smelt a rat, the paper says. Within a few hours, DIKO released a statement saying it would table the matter for discussion at House education committee and demand to know about the content of the lesson and the “government’s real intentions”. The Greens were convinced the subject would “be more of a propaganda lesson,” doubting the government wanted to promote “pluralist thinking”. EDEK was concerned over what type of federation the schoolchildren would be taught, while the terrified Alliance of Citizens reckoned that a lesson on federation “would create students who were ready – instead of defending human rights and the freedom of their country – to negotiate the conditions of their subjugation.”

The paper concludes by saying that perhaps our morally superior politicians who know everything should stop and consider for once what kind of citizens this childish type of public debate creates. And then they wonder why a very big proportion of the population is completely disinterested in politics. How could any person with a modicum of intelligence take this type of political debate seriously? People can only laugh at the daily political utterances of the parties, if they can be bothered to pay any attention to them at all.

4. Tsielepis: rejection of bizonal federation would mean de facto partition

In an interview in Phileleftheros, constitutional expert and member of the negotiating team, Toumazos Tsielepis, says that rejection of bizonal federation means de facto partition.

He says even though it’s 40 years since the invasion, we are still arguing amongst ourselves what this bizonal bicommunal federation means and we all have different interpretations. For example, when we talk about federation we mean that there will be two levels of authority – the central authority and the regional ones. We mean that there will be a split of competencies. When we talk of bizonality, we mean what was contained in the Makarios-Denktash high level agreements, namely that there will be two regions and that each region will be governed by its respective community. When we talk of bicommunality, we mean that there will be effective participation of the two communities in decision-making processes.

However, he goes on, whenever we submit proposals along these lines a racist, apartheitist clamour arises to such an extent that it seems that the disagreement is not really because of different interpretations of the same thing, but a deliberate rejection of this type of solution.

The only possible outcome of the rejection of this type of solution, is partition, he says, which is the most unacceptable situation that could exist.

He said that the reason why the Cyprus problem hasn’t been solved all these years is because of Turkish intransigence, but that didn’t mean that nothing depends on us. We must undertake the responsibility that is ours and to try and overcome this intransigence. He said Turkey may pay lip service to federation, but the content of the proposals that are submitted smacks of confederation. If the problem hasn’t been solved it’s because Turkey hasn’t respected what was agreed, so our job is to expose this.

He emphasised that it was wrong of Anastasiades not to continue the talks from where they had left off under Christofias. We had got far with Talat, and then Eroglu came along and destroyed all the substantial convergences we had reached. We have always been saying that what we achieved with Talat would have been impossible to achieve with Eroglu. That’s why the talks should have continued where they left off, he concluded.