Turkish road map for solution

Turkish Cypriot daily Halkin Sesi reported last week that a five-point road map submitted by the Turkish Cypriot side at the Cyprus negotiations, was leaked to the press as follows:

1) The second stage of substantial negotiations, during which the positions are mutually determined, will be completed before the negotiators take their summer break.

2) The last stage which is the give and take will start at the end of August. The map, the security and the guarantees will be left for the next stage.

3) The leaders will visit the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York in September during the General Assembly, and will once more put their disagreements before the Secretary-General. They will plan the last steps together with the Secretary-General.

4) A four-party conference will be organized with the participation of guarantor powers Turkey and Greece, as well as the two sides in Cyprus. This will constitute the most important stage of the negotiations, during which the territory, the map, the security and the guarantees will be decided. At the same time as the guarantors are having discussions at the conference, the Cypriot leaders will continue to negotiate. If the differences are reconciled, the date of the referendums will be set. In the interim period, delegations of experts will enter the closed city of Varosha and the work for opening the city again for settlement will officially be launched.

5) In the fifth and last stage, a referendum will be held in Cyprus, ten years after the previous one. If the outcome is ‘yes’ from both sides, a new state will be declared. However, if the outcome is ‘no’, then it will be declared that this process has failed and that a solution cannot be found in Cyprus any more. In case the process fails, a broad conference will be organized in which all sides concerned with the Cyprus problem will be gathered. Here they will discuss what should be done for the solution of the problem.

2. The show must go on

Turkish Cypriot politician Mustafa Akinci, in a speech he gave at the University of Cyprus last Monday, said the reason why the Cyprus problem has not been solved yet is because politicians did not want to solve it, writes Loucas Charalambous in the Cyprus Mail.

Akinci said in his speech: “During the 1990s, at a reception, I approached the then special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Cyprus and asked him how the negotiations were going. ‘Not at all well,’ he replied. I persisted with my questions and asked him if this meant we would not have a settlement. ‘No, it will never happen,’ he said, prompting me to ask him why the talks were continuing. His response shocked me. ‘Because the show must go on,’ he told me.

“On another occasion Rauf Denktash invited us to his office for a briefing. I asked him if there was any hope of an agreement and he categorically replied that there was no prospect of a settlement. I said that if there was a will there could be a settlement. He became annoyed and told me: ‘Listen Akinci, as we are moving neither my grandchildren nor my grandchildren’s grandchildren will see the settlement’.”

The writer says that these two anecdotes of Akinci’s clearly illustrate why the Cyprus problem has not been solved in 50 years. It was not solved because the will does not exist. It was not solved because the show had to go on.

And why did it have to go on? The politicians in our country are only interested in their ‘chairs’, as we say in Cyprus. In 2004, not to go too far back, there was no settlement because Tassos Papadopoulos, his ministers, deputies, state officials had to keep their ‘chairs’.

The show went on under Christofias because he did not want to surrender his chair either and have to share power within the framework of a federal state. And Anastasiades is now keeping the show going because he is not prepared to get off his chair for the sake of a solution. This is the reason he has been dragging his feet and undermining the talks with irrational proposals that allow Dervis Eroglu to claim that he was the one in a hurry for a settlement which was being delayed because of the obstacles being placed by the Greek Cypriots.

A while ago it was Papadopoulos, yesterday it was Christofias, today it is Anastasiades and tomorrow it will be someone else. Presidents change, but the chair is always there and the person occupying it will never be interested in a solution, because he too will want the show to go on, the writer concludes.

3. Coffeeshop

The Cyprus Mail’s satirical column Coffeeshop says that this last week it was again confirmed that the latest bout of talks was going nowhere, with Nik and Dervis emerging from their meeting disappointed and dejected and engaging in the customary blame-gaming.


This lack of progress is of great concern to the UN and the Yanks who are keen to secure the settlement that would allow them to implement their energy plans for the region. It is believed that the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative Lisa Buttenheim is much too gentle and polite to knock heads together and force the two sides to cut out the diversionary tactics, giving them the leeway to wriggle out of real negotiations. This could be because she does not have the same mandate that Big Bad Al (Downer) had but also because she is not inclined to employ the Aussie’s bullying tactics.
 Without a bullying special envoy of the Bad Al type, it is believed the talks will eventually grind to halt. But the US has already found a man to take on the thankless role of Special Representative – former Under-Secretary-General of the UN Lynn Pascoe.
 However not all Cyprus’ political parties have given their consent to his appointment, the UN having decided to consult the parties before making its announcement. The commies of AKEL are opposing him. Apart from being American, he also committed the cardinal sin of having had a row with comrade Tof when the latter was president and has not yet been forgiven.

Pascoe, whom many of our journalists insist on referring to as Pasko-e, served as Under-SG at the UN Department of Political Affairs from 2007 to 2012 during which time he was actively involved in the Cyprob. He knows the problem inside out, which is why he is considered the ideal man to take charge of the talks.
And the Yanks obviously want one of their own. He had previously served as US Ambassador to Malaysia and Indonesia and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs at the State Department; he was also the US Special Negotiator for Nagorno-Karabach.
However, Pasko-e had always received bad write-ups in our papers, when serving at the UN, especially from the omniscient Washington-based hack Michalis Ignatiou, who regularly portrayed him as another Turk-loving Yank, whose sole objective was to screw over the Greek Cypriots. Ig even wrote an article singing the praises of comrade Tof, for falling out with the scheming and ruthless Pasko-e. 
Nothing has been leaked about Pasko-e’s proposed appointment, probably because other parties apart from AKEL want to scupper it and fear publicity will ruin their plans to protect Kyproulla from the dastardly plans of our new strategic ally.