Don’t write off Holbrooke yet

By Martin Hellicar

THE U.S. has not taken any steps to appoint a possible new presidential envoy for Cyprus, ambassador Kenneth Brill said yesterday.

Speaking after a meeting with President Clerides yesterday, Brill said that Richard Holbrooke would remain presidential emissary until “he is not”. Holbrooke was recently appointed US ambassador to the UN. but the posting will not be official until US senate confirmation hearings are over.

Brill said this was a long and complicated process.

“I don’t think that we can assume or should assume that anybody is going to take over from Dick,” Brill said.

He said Holbrooke intended to remain very much involved in the Cyprus problem.

This week, Holbrooke chaired the second ever-meeting of Greek and Turkish businessmen and their Cypriot counterparts in Oslo.

Brill called the meeting “a useful step forward”.

“It was an opportunity for people to have the chance to talk directly to one another,” he said.

Contact between the two sides was cut by the Turkish Cypriot side last December following the EU’s Luxembourg decision to open accession talks with Cyprus.

The severing of ties was condemned by Holbrooke when he visited the island in May. He left empty-handed after failing to persuade the Turkish Cypriot side to return to the negotiating table.

Now hopes for progress on the UN-led intercommunal talks are now pinned on the UN secretary-general’s special envoy, Diego Cordovez, who arrived on the island yesterday and met both leaders.

Brill said the US was hopeful that this visit would help move the process forward towards direct negotiations.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.