Conspiracy theory season opens

The Sunday Mail's satirical column Coffeeshop says that the conspiracy theory season was opened triumphantly this week, in view of the critical developments in the Cyprob as they are working to a December deadline, by master conspiracy theorist, political moralist, bribery correspondent and book author Michalis Ignatiou, who got hold of a couple of UN documents and milked them dry both in Phil and Mega TV. Even though the content of the documents was not very sexy , the resourceful Ig, sexed them up adding his personal interpretation and views thus turning the mundane and predictable exchanges at two meetings, involving UN officials, into a wider international conspiracy aimed at pressuring the Greek Cypriots into agreeing to an unfair settlement. Phil’s banner headline for the story on Thursday was, “(They are) ‘Cooking’ pressure for G/Cs”. The pressure was not being ‘cooked’ in a pressure cooker, as you would expect, but at the UN with the Yanks acting as the chefs. The pressure cooker conspiracy consisted of the minutes of two meetings – one between the UN deputy Secretary-General Lyn Pascoe and US ambassador to Nicosia Frank Urbancic and the other between Big Al Downer and Little Mehmet Ali. A big song and dance was made about Pascoe telling Urbancic that Big Al had been instructed to inject ideas into the peace process, “while ensuring that the parties retained ownership of the talks.” This could hardly have surprised any sane person – if Big Al cannot come up with ideas, why is he here? According to Ig, this “revealed the intention to impose covert arbitration,” which is a big no-no for our side. Big Al has been warned – ideas for bridging the differences between the two sides are not allowed, because this would constitute arbitration. Other observations were made at the meeting but they are just too boring to repeat. The arbitration spin, by Ig captured the imagination of all our bash-patriotic politicians, who were queuing up at TV and radio stations to condemn the latest conspiracy by the Yanks and the UN to introduce much-hated arbitration.