Positive messages abound

President Christofias has said he expects consistency from Britain. He told the British Prime Minister’s special envoy Joan Ryan who is currently visiting Cyprus that he also expects it from other parties concerned such as Talat and Turkey. He said he had a good meeting with Ms Ryan who he has known for 15 years, as someone with close contacts with the Cypriot community in the UK, and expects that Britain would play a positive role.

In an article in Politis before arriving on the island Ms Ryan said she will be coming with a renewed sense of optimism and that this year is a true opportunity to end the partition of Cyprus. She said the main purpose of her meeting was to meet with a number of people and listen to their point of view. “My basic aim is to see how the UK can help them reach a just and lasting solution”, she said.

Politis says that the subject matter for the committee on security and guarantees has also been sorted and work could start by the end of the week. The paper says that the Turkish side did not want to discuss Turkey’s rights of intervention but that Nami and Iacovou managed to find a formula that satisfies both sides without preventing the G/C side from raising the issue of guarantees.

Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris reported yesterday that Talat has made a tough statement against Christofias in response to a statement by the latter that Turkey should change its policy in Cyprus. Christofias told the UN and the EU: “In order to change the policy of Cyprus the attention must turn to Turkey. If the policy of Ankara does not change the way to the solution will not be able to open. The solution must envisage ending of the occupation and the colonisation and demilitarisation.”

Talat told Bayrak that Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot side have exerted a great effort for the solution of the Cyprus problem and there is no need to prove this. Mr Talat added that while at first Christofias approached the solution plan positively, he changed afterwards and carried out a campaign for its rejection. Therefore, he added, the Greek Cypriot side is the one which should prove that it wants a solution, not Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot side. “I believe that first he must explain the reasons for rejecting the plan after deceiving the UN, the whole world for months, for years by saying that they would vote ‘yes’ to the plan, by creating this image until the last day and changing policy the last day. Furthermore, today he should prove that he has now changed his policies truly wants a solution”, he said. Moreover Halkin Sesi also says “Christofias’ statements poison the climate” and reports that Talat reacted strongly to Christofias’ accusations against Turkey “who spoke like Papadopoulos”, saying that such statements only poison the climate. The paper concludes that yesterday the Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan visited the UK and held a meeting with his English counterpart David Miliband as well as a surprise meeting with the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Government Spokesman Stephanos Stephanou said the G/C side cannot understand Talat’s reaction in criticising Christofias’ vision of a solution for Cyprus. In an interview to Simerini Christofias has simply said that the G/C side remains committed to a bizonal, bicommunal federation which both sides had accepted through the high level agreements of ’77 and ’79. “If Talat is concerned about statements that poison the atmosphere perhaps he should look at whether some of his own statements help create a good climate”, he said.

Politis’ editor Andreas Paraschos in his column in the paper refers to an interview that Christofias gave to Simerini in which he said we should be ready for a solution which will be a bizonal, bicommunal federation, something that the people had not been prepared to accept in the past. He says this is the first time that a President of Cyprus has realised that preparation of public opinion is necessary for a solution to be accepted, the only problem is that this is going to be just as difficult as solving the Cyprus problem. It means confronting all the various nationalistic and populist myths and it means telling people some hard truths. It means acknowledging that the G/C community has committed crimes against the T/C community and it means getting rid of all the rhetoric such as “all refugees must return to their homes”, or “our borders are in Kyrenia”. Can all refugees return to their homes? Can our borders be in Kyrenia? It depends. Truth is not one-dimensional. Christofias said the other day that we can return to Kyrenia – under T/C rule. To do so, however, we must accept that we will live together with the T/C in peace under the same federal roof and that on the one side the T/C will rule.

Coffeeshop in the Sunday Mail wonders who would have thought a couple of months ago that Mehmet Ali Talat would have been going for a morning stroll in Ledra Street? This latest act of provocation by the Turkish Cypriot pseudo-leader, just when the climate had improved, would never have occurred if the Ethnarch was still mismanaging water resources. But the defender of our national sovereignty has gone and Ankara’s jumped-up little puppet seized the opportunity to violate the buffer zone and invade the free part of the capital, making the expansionist intentions of his military masters crystal clear. He thought he would fool us with this crude public relations stunt and his false smile, but every single Ledra Street shopkeeper knew he was just surveying the territories he would be ruling over, once our naive comrade presidente signs the new version of the Satanic plan, which will be brought back in a few months. And before anyone accuses me of being a miserable kodjakari and failing to see the positive side of the crafty Ottoman’s walkabout, I would like to ask why he brought a small army of secret, pseudo-gorillas in dark shades, posing as his bodyguards, with him? This was a flagrant violation of the buffer zone, UN resolutions, the Human Rights Charter, the High Level Agreements and Shengen and showed utter contempt for the sovereignty of the internationally recognised People’s Republic of Kyproulla. I have to say that our establishment was very disappointed to learn that Talat bought a Mikis Theodorakis CD during his Ledra St tour. Theodorakis’ music makes you want to march to Eleftheria Square, holding a red flag, to listen to an anti-occupation speech by Dr Faustus Lyssarides - not the healthiest of impulses. Overjoyed to report that our former Ethnarch is not sitting at his political office sulking about losing the elections. On Wednesday he was one of the three ex-presidentes who attended the first National Council meeting under the comradely chairmanship of the new presidente. His main contribution to the meeting was to enquire, which side had control of the 30 metres of the buffer zone running between Kykkos St and Ermou St on the Ledra St crossing. He said the agreement had not clarified this point. But who cares, apart from Tassos, who is in charge of 30 metres of land when everyone is allowed to use it and there is no soldier in sight. The guy should donate his brain to science after he’s gone.

Loucas Charalambous writing in both the Sunday Mail and Politis said that if there is one thing really new in Cyprus in the last 50 days, it must be the encouraging messages for the future of our small country that are being sent from both sides of the Green Line, not just the number, but also the loudness and source of these messages. Something has drastically changed since Tassos Papadopoulos packed his bags from the Presidential Palace. Positive messages abound eg when Ferdi Soyer said about the Apostolos Andreas monastery: “The monastery does not belong only to the Greek Cypriots, but it is a piece of Cyprus’ history"; or the statement by DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades, who said that “we live under the same sky”.