Gas could be an incentive for reconciliation in Cyprus

 The President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, has given strong support to Turkey’s EU membership bid, the Kurdish peace bid and reforms, while underlining the importance of a solution to the Cyprus issue and Turkey’s importance in the trade talks between the EU and the United States, Turkish daily Hurriyet reports.

Van Rompuy was speaking in Ankara where he met with Turkey’s top officials, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“As a candidate negotiating EU-membership, Turkey’s ties to the union are already very strong. ... After a moment of standstill, this commitment will give a new impetus and will soon be translated into a concrete step forward. And I am confident other such concrete steps will follow. The accession negotiations are the main driver in our relationship,” van Rompuy told the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).

On energy, van Rompuy said the bloc had a common interest in improving access to energy resources, particularly from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. “At a time of growing demand worldwide, diversifying supply sources are a must, be it from conventional or renewable energy. Given our common energy challenges, increasing our cooperation in energy matters is desirable. That’s why European commissioners and Turkish Ministers last year agreed to deepen our energy relations in several ways.”

He also said it was essential to find a solution to the Cyprus problem, adding that the discovery of gas reserves could be an incentive for peaceful reconciliation.

“When looking into the Cyprus issue, I see a striking parallel with European history. The historic reconciliation between France and Germany after many wars was built on the idea of sharing coal; coal and steel, the war-fuelling products, stood at the basis of the European project. In one brilliant move, political leaders on both sides turned around a situation, changing a mutual threat into a common opportunity”, he said.

“As I said one year ago in the Parliament in Nicosia: switching gas for coal, this could be beneficial for both communities in Cyprus and the Cyprus problem may be solved”, he added. “We, as the European Union, we fully support a solution in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions”.

Dinner will go ahead on 30 May

The dinner for President Anastasiades and Dervis Eroglu hosted by the UN Secretary-General’s special representative Alexander Downer will go ahead as planned even though the date has reportedly been switched to May 30, according to the press.

It will supposedly remain of a social nature, as Anastasiades had demanded in a letter he sent to Ban Ki-moon last Friday.

According to a written statement issued by the Cyprus Government Spokesman, Christos Stylianides, the Chef de Cabinet of the UN Secretary-General, Mrs Susana Malcorra, gave the appropriate reassurances on behalf of the Secretary General regarding the dinner in response to President Anastasiades’ letter.

In his letter the president had complained that Downer had tried to turn the dinner into a political event despite having given assurances to the contrary. He felt that Downer’s associates “had leaked to unauthorised individuals inaccurate information, with the result of the undermining of our credibility and the creation of the mistaken impression about the resumption of the peace talks.”

Anastasiades giving more ammunition to opponents of a settlement

An editorial in the Cyprus Mail says perhaps there were other goings-on that were not specified in Anastasiades’ letter, but even if there were, they could not justify the knee-jerk reaction and brash tone of the letter.

The strange thing was, the paper says, that Anastasiades had always enjoyed a very good relationship with Downer, meeting regularly with him and never participating in the concerted attacks on the Australian by all other parties and leaders. Did he feel obliged to adopt a more confrontational approach now he was president, or was he trying to keep his rejectionist alliance partners happy?

His angry reaction may have had something to do with the revelations that he was in possession of a 77-page UN document, listing the convergences and divergences of the talks, about which he had kept the National Council in the dark. Perhaps he thought that sending an angry letter was the best way to shift public attention away from this omission, which the opposition parties took exception to. This would also explain why he made his letter public on the very same day he sent it, probably before anyone at the UN headquarters had read it.

Making the letter public gave the impression he was playing to the gallery rather than voicing legitimate concerns. If he had concerns these should have been conveyed to Ban in a confidential letter. By going public, he sparked another bout of Downer-bashing by the political parties and calls for the Australian’s replacement. While this will not happen, after the four years of work Downer and his team had put into the peace efforts, all the president’s letter achieved was to give more ammunition to the campaign of opponents of a settlement.

It was not a smart move, if he remains committed to reaching a deal.

Cyprob is back

1. Anastasiades says he had asked to see document

President Nicos Anastasiades yesterday said he was the one who had asked to see the UN document on the convergences and divergences between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the Cyprus problem between 2008 and 2012, the Cyprus Mail reports. 


Some political parties have interpreted the document as an attempt to lock in convergences and force Greek Cypriots into unacceptable concessions.

But Anastasiades said yesterday in a written statement that he had requested to see the report “not, of course, to use it as a basis of restarting negotiations from where they left off but so the Greek Cypriot side can be able to know… in a substantiated and serious way how it can withdraw any proposals the majority of the people and political leaders find unacceptable”.


Anastasiades said although he was keen to re-launch peace talks as soon as possible, the government was now focused on tackling “the problems the present economic crisis has accumulated”. Everyone involved, including the United Nations, understands that, Anastasiades said. 


“At the same time I consider confrontations to be unnecessary and pointless since a new national council meeting has been set for June 15,” he said.

Matters that have been pigeonholed for discussion during the meeting include deciding on a negotiator and coming up with a framework for proposals as well as deciding on the format of a new round of talks, Anastasiades said. 


DIKO leader and coalition partner Marios Garoyian said yesterday the UN document cannot serve as a foundation for peace talks. “It is merely an informal departmental document by the UN team on the Cyprus problem, no more,” he said. But he expressed concern the report gave the impression of “a complete solution plan”. That may be a sneaky way of presenting a ready-made draft solution for discussion during peace talks in an effort to limit them in only the divergences, risking “trapping our side in as many possible ‘convergences’ made between 2008-2012,” Garoyian said.


House President and EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou repeated yesterday his view that Greek Cypriots should not accept the UN document as “an interim agreement in the context of continuing Cyprus problem negotiations”. 
But former ruling party AKEL that was in power during the time referenced in the document warned via its spokesman George Loucaides that a clean slate endangered a “significant risk” for Anastasiades who would be tasked with accomplishing something better. The UN document is not a solution proposal, Loucaides said. “Nothing is considered to be agreed on unless everything is agreed,” he added.

2. Coffeeshop

Rejoice, rejoice and hallelujah, the Cyprob is back, says the Cyprus Mail’s satirical column, Coffeeshop. Everyone’s favourite problem has returned to our sun-kissed shores, putting the smile back on our politicians’ faces after some very difficult months, giving our freedom-fighters a reason to get out of bed in the morning and setting off the flow of the sexual juices of our journalists. I thought I would never say this but, like everyone else, I missed it and for a while I was anxious that it would never come back.

Existence was empty and meaningless in the last 12 months, the Cyprob had disappeared from our lives replaced by the all-destroying economic problems and the malicious presence of the troikans, compared to whom Big Bad Al is a cuddly teddy-bear. The Eurogroup meetings, the troika, Delia and Dijsselbloem made us appreciate the benign nature of the Cyprob and its kindly protagonists that never punished our heroic defiance, public posturing, delaying tactics, legalistic hair-splitting and resounding ‘nos’ to everything like our nasty EU partners had done.


The Cyprob is the game we all love to play because we always win – we always achieve our objective of no deal – and that is the reason we want to keep playing. It is no wonder that after the crushing defeats and humiliations we suffered in the last couple of months, the return of our number one national problem was welcomed like manna from heaven by everyone.

For a while we thought that it would never arrive. Big Bad Al visited, had meetings with the two leaders, travelled to Greece and Turkey, arranged a dinner for May 29, made some statements but failed to spark any interest. This was followed by Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides’ visit to the US where he met the UN chief and American Secretary of State, John Kerry, whom he supposedly persuaded to treat the Cyprob, our economic woes and natural gas as three separate issues; it is what the CyBC correspondent triumphantly reported. The problem still failed to take centre stage despite the zealous efforts of its salesmen in the media who were warning about foreign efforts to link the three issues and ultimately force ‘the speedy closure of the problem’.

Nothing, apart from AKEL, inspires as much stupidity as the Cyprob.
 The warnings did not spark any hysteria and neither did Wednesday’s six-hour National Council circus, which discussed the prob as well as the economy and featured a special guest appearance by comrade Gaaaros, not as an economics expert but as an achaparos former president.
 A white lie told by the current president, tricky Nicky, to the party bosses paved the way for the triumphant return of the Cyprob to our lives. He told them that there was nothing to report, an innocent lie, considering he was in possession of Al’s 70-page document with the convergences achieved in the talks.

Unfortunately, on Thursday, a loser Turkish Cypriot politician, who acts like an AKEL mascot and is in charge of a Mickey-mouse party in the north called United Kibris, spilled the fasoulia. 
After a meeting with his commie comrade Andros, Izzet Izdjan revealed that the UN had handed over a ‘document work-plan’ to Dervis Eroglu and it was being translated. Explanations were demanded by the Akelites and the government spokesman said the government had only received the document on that day, which was a bit of a lie. The document had been handed over by Al a while ago but there had been an agreement with tricky Nicky not to make its existence public. After all, there was nothing in it that was not known but our president had to have an official UN document recording the convergences reached in the talks by his predecessor.
 However, the fact that he kept it a secret made a mega-boring matter – could anything be more boring than a 70-page document with the convergences of the talks – sexy for our politicians, hacks and TV bosses. Their love-juices started to flow again as they now had a compelling reason to put our beloved problem on centre stage. The doom and gloom was lifted as our opinion formers were gripped by sweet-natured paranoia and suspicion once again. AKEL asked why Eroglu had received the document many days before our side and why Nik had not mentioned the existence of it at the National Council meeting. Would he have announced its receipt if Izdjan had said nothing about it? The fuss did not amount to a hill of fasoulia but was enough get the Cyprob’s homecoming party going.

On Friday morning all radio shows had upbeat politicians moaning about the latest outrage by the UN and Big Bad Al, while Phil’s banner headline spoke about the ‘Downer document bomb’. In the evening, the CyBC’s main TV news reported that the document ‘provoked turmoil.’ But ‘even bigger turmoil’ was caused by the letter sent by tricky Nicky to Ban Ki-moon complaining about Al’s attempt to turn the May 29 dinner into a political meeting and threatening not attending. 
Even Nik wanted to play the Cyprob game. He had never in the past publicly attacked Al but now decided to join in the fun. Had he been advised to write the letter by his partners, the DIKO Downer destroyers? How was the Aussie trying to turn the dinner from a social to a political dinner? Was he going to force Nik to sign an unfair settlement while he was waiting for his dessert? I suspect, although he did not mention in it in his letter to Ban, Nik was upset by the release of the UN document, which made him look a liar, as Al had agreed to keep its existence out of the public domain. But was it the Aussie’s fault that AKEL’s Turkish Cypriot mascot found out about the document and informed his commie masters?

Bash-patriots took the president’s letter as a cue to renew their old calls for the immediate replacement of Big Bad Al who had proved beyond any doubt that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Turk-lover scheming to politicise a social event. Even Lillikas added his voice to the calls for the Al’s axing. The Cyprob is back with a vengeance. It made you wonder where all these brave freedom fighters were hiding when the IMF’s deleterious Delia was imposing terms guaranteed to wreck our economy for years. I do not recall hearing any of them publicly demanding the IMF immediately replace her and send someone less nasty to negotiate the bailout, which caused much more harm to the country than Al’s boring document ever would. This is why we love our Cyprob so much. It allows our politicians to show how brave they really are.

Another good reason for being angry with Al and the UN was their choice of date for the Nik-Derv dinner. It was May 29, the date of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. 
The 560th anniversary of the fall of Byzantium’s capital to the bloodthirsty Turkish hordes was a provocatively insensitive date, as the Lazaros Patriotic show reminded its listeners every day in the last week, insisting that this was no day to have dinner with Eroglu. 
His rants worked, the presidential palace asking for a re-scheduling of the dinner. Although the Turks initially refused, we hear that the dinner has been moved to May 30. Don’t be surprised if Eroglu asks for another date because it is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of London, officially ending the First Balkan War in which Turkey was resoundingly defeated by Greece and Serbia.

3. Our ‘heroic’ No’s have cost us dear

Nicos Rolandis, former Foreign Minister and Commerce Minister, MP and president of the Liberal Party, writing in the Cyprus Mail says that almost all the assessments and decisions we reached over the years were proved wrong. Unable to tell the difference between real heroism, which difficult national decisions require, and the heroic stupidity of populism, we upgraded the word “No” to a symbol of heroism, ruining our country and our lives.
 

Between 1948 and 1958 we had four proposals for solving the Cyprus problem, which were all better than what ensued: Consultative Assembly (1948), Harding Proposals (1955-56), Ratcliffe Constitution (1956) and the Macmillan Plan (1958). We shouted “No” to all of them. We opted for armed struggle with enosis (Union with Greece) as its aim, an aim Greece herself had not approved. We had great, really heroic acts during the struggle, but the objective was not achieved. Amongst other things, we caused the uprising of the Turkish minority in Cyprus (18 per cent of the population), which until then had been satisfied with a “second violin” role as long as their rights were safeguarded. We gave them power and status and we converted them into a “community”. So, we ended up in 1960 with the Zurich-London Agreements and the Republic of Cyprus. And we cried out with joy: “We have won”. Then in 1963, we said “No” to this joyous achievement. We committed the fatal blunder of pursuing a revision of the 1960 Constitution on very sensitive issues touching upon the rights of the Turkish Cypriots (and against the advice of Greece). We thus planted the seeds of partition. The period 1963-1974 was rife with “Nos” to logic as we aimed for the unattainable. Repeatedly, we went after enosis again, contravening the constitution.

Turkey started threatening “invasion” in 1965. Finally, in 1974 came the Greek and Greek Cypriot coup d’état, which fully opened the gate for the Turkish invasion. This happened despite the many theories that Turkey could not invade because we were a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, a member of the Council of Europe, a member of the Non-Aligned, and a country which had signed in 1972 an Association Agreement with the European Communities (EEC). It had never occurred to our leaders, that this is a world where “interests” and “power”, not “principles”, prevail. We thus lost more than one third of our country. From 1978 to 2004 we shouted “No” to all important initiatives to solve our problem (which were getting worse and worse as time went by): the Anglo-American-Canadian Plan (1978), the Indicators (1983), the Consolidated Documents (1985-6), the Set of Ideas (1992), the Troutbeck-Glion Initiative (1997), and the Annan Plan (2002-4). In short, we ourselves buried the Cyprus problem. With our “No” to the 1983 (Indicators), we paved the way for the unilateral declaration of the Turkish Cypriot “state”.

We had many warnings. But our leaders paid no heed. Between 1996 and1998 and with the active involvement of Greece, we said “No” to logic by ignoring Turkish military supremacy and ordered the S300 missiles. We eventually wasted 270m dollars on the missiles, which now rest in peace after having been thrown away on the mountains of Crete.


In 2000-2001 we said “No” to the rules of the economy and the markets as we created a stock market “bubble”. When it burst, the financial and social balances of the country were turned upside down. From 2008 to 2012 we racked up a fiscal deficit of more than €6 billion, through non-existent financial planning. Our banks lost €4.5 billion on the Greek government bonds and €5 billion were transferred to Greece, which were used for uncollateralised loans. We lost our credibility, which is now equivalent to junk. We were thrown out of the markets. “Looking proudly ahead” we said “No” to the basic rules of economics and blew up our country. And our European partners, acting unprecedentedly fiercely, gave us the coup de grace.  


Roman politician and thinker Cicero once stated: “To stumble twice on the same stone is a great shame”. We have stumbled more than 20 times on that same stone in the past 60 years.
 When the search for our dreams began, I was 20 years old. Today I am 78. Now that I have reached my golden years, I would like to give one more a piece of advice about the dangers emanating from natural gas.  
Natural gas constitutes huge wealth with a probable value of hundreds of billions of dollars. It is a blessing, which may turn into a curse if we are not careful. Let’s not forget that most wars today are linked to oil and gas.  
Turkey has been threatening for many years. She invokes the rights of the Turkish Cypriots and the fact that she has not signed and is not bound by the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982.   
We invoke our sovereign rights, which are recognised by all countries. But we were invoking these very same rights in 1974, and had their recognition by all countries, yet nobody stopped the invasion or extended a helping hand.

Forty years have elapsed since then, and not a single square kilometre out of the 3,500 occupied by Turkey was ever returned to us. 
Furthermore, we should not forget the continuous admonitions we have had from Europeans, Americans, Russians and others, that we should not overlook the rights of the Turkish Cypriots. The most recent statement came from our friend the foreign minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, who said on April 17:  “Any exploitation of the natural resources must be based on consent, so that all Cypriots, without any exception will benefit”.


I am not presenting a fictitious risk. I am a realist. Nor am I suggesting that we should negotiate under pressure. I am simply suggesting that we should not put up another heroic “No”, because I am afraid that we shall pay for it much more dearly than ever before. We must not stumble once more. We should use natural gas as a catalyst in the effort to solve the problem of Cyprus and probably the wider problems of Greece and Turkey as well.

I would repeat the words of General Themistocles to Admiral Eurybiades, in 480 BC before the sea battle of Salamis: “Hit me but listen to me.”  



Downer document

According to press reports today, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus, Alexander Downer, has submitted to the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides a 70-page document recording the convergences and divergences that were achieved in the talks on the Cyprus problem during Dimitri Christofias’ term of office.

Politis newspaper says that the document has caused a stir on the Greek Cypriot side as no mention of its existence was made during a meeting yesterday of the National Council. Alithia cites well-informed sources as saying that the document contains details which will cause an uproar when they become public. It all shows that the UN is preparing the ground for talks to start again probably in the autumn.

Recent reports in the Turkish press had said that Downer had also given a report to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during a meeting the two men had in Ankara at which they had exchanged views on the political process in Cyprus.

According to diplomatic circles, during that meeting Davutoglu had emphasized Turkey’s undaunted support for talks to reunite the island and its determination to find a solution to the Cyprus issue, saying that the Turkish Cypriot side's call to restart the stalled talks should be urgently addressed.

Davutoglu also explained Turkey’s position on the issue of the gas reserves off the coast of Cyprus, namely that the full rights of the Turkish Cypriots in this regard should be respected.

“Either they (the Greek Cypriots) will come and we will find a solution or let us achieve an agreement that encompasses these resources in the context of a limited solution if they could not go for a definite overall solution, or if they say that ‘these resources belong to us and the resources in the north belong to the Turks’, this means that the time of thinking about a two state solution has come”, Davutoglu said.

The Foreign Minister and Downer also discussed letters Davutoglu had sent to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Foreign Ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Germany and Greece calling for a new solution initiative on Cyprus.

The leaders of the two communities are due to meet on 29 May at a dinner at the residence of the UN Special Representative, Lisa Buttenheim.

The Turkish Cypriot press reported that Turkish Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu said that during the dinner they will discuss when to restart the talks and that he would request a road map be drawn up and a deadline set.

Meanwhile Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday he saw a good opportunity for progress towards ending the division of Cyprus, a move that could further the exploitation of natural gas and oil in the eastern Mediterranean, Reuters reports.

Efforts to reunite the island have repeatedly failed, but Turkish officials say the election in February of President Nicos Anastasiades, who backed a 2004 UN plan to resolve the division, presents the best hope in years of reaching a deal.

"We believe that there is a lot of opportunity to reach an agreement on the Cyprus issue, and this is an area which we continue to focus on," Erdogan said at a news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama during a trip to Washington.

"We're optimistic, we're working for a solution and we are asking the United States to apply diplomatic support to this as well," a Turkish official said ahead of talks between Erdogan and Obama.

Talk has been ripe recently that a solution is on the cards. Loucas Charalambous writing in the Sunday Mail, says the discovery of natural gas deposits and the bankruptcy of the Cyprus Republic have given rise to suggestions that now is the right time for a settlement of the Cyprus problem.

Of course, he adds, talk about a settlement is academic because the Greek Cypriots do not want to hear about it. They have come to terms with partition, which they consider the best settlement. 

It is no accident that whenever someone talks about a solution he comes under fire from our super-patriots. ‘Solution’ has become a dirty word which is guaranteed to spark mass hysteria. The AKEL leadership, for instance, in an announcement it issued a few days ago to declare its anti-Troikan sentiments, warned that those who were hell-bent on destroying us economically also had an ulterior objective - the imposition of an ‘anti-popular’ settlement through the return of the Annan plan.

Needless to say, all people with a brain know that if it were possible to bring back the Annan plan, the Greek Cypriots should be dancing with joy. But the AKEL leadership has no need to worry because now the Turkish Cypriots would not accept it. The only possible solution now is partition, as cemented by AKEL in 2004.

Even partition, if legalised, would be a solution, he adds, albeit the worst possible solution, but if it is the choice of the majority then we should accept it. It is definitely better than the current situation which hides dangers so big they would give Greek Cypriots many sleepless nights, if they were aware of them.

A settlement under today’s conditions could prove beneficial particularly for our side. Many have noted the positive effect it would have on the efforts to cash in on our hydrocarbon deposits, as a settlement would end the risky confrontation with Turkey. Our side, with its unilateral moves in this direction, is constantly playing with fire and if someone is going to get badly burned in this high-risk game, it is more than likely to be the weak party.

There is another reason for supporting a settlement now. A settlement, partition included, would help the recovery of the economy more than any other measure. The re-building of areas that might be returned, especially of Famagusta, would boost investment and business activity which are the only remedy for unemployment. 

There would be very big investments in the tourism sector, investments financed by foreign capital, as the Cyprus banks would be unable  to provide funding. And there is little doubt that, in a few years this unrivalled tourist resort would generate huge income for the country. 

In 2004 the Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan plan because they felt it was not in their interest, economically. One of the main arguments used against it was that a settlement would force Greek Cypriots to support the poorer Turkish Cypriots. 

But history plays strange games. Today, it would be the Turkish Cypriots that have a good reason to reject a settlement, out of fear that they would have to support the bankrupt Greek Cypriots. How ironic, that the Greek Cypriots, who rejected the settlement for economic reasons in 2004, today have a real incentive to accept it, for economic reasons. 

But, I repeat, the discussion is academic. Greek Cypriots, even impoverished, do not want to hear of a settlement. Even President Anastasiades does not like bringing it up any more because he does not want to upset his government partner Garoyian, and he sent his foreign minister to the US to persuade the Americans and the UN that now was not the time for a settlement.