By Melina Demetriou
FOREIGN Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides yesterday gave Turkish Cypriots one year to decide on the government’s offer to join its EU negotiating team.
“The window of opportunity will remain open until September next year,” he said, “and until then they have time to return to Cyprus problem talks and also to join our negotiating team.”
Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash deems Cyprus’ application for EU membership illegal and has repeatedly turned down invitations to participate in Cyprus’ membership negotiations.
Cassoulides was speaking yesterday after this week’s visit to Cyprus by European Commission President Romano Prodi.
Addressing the House of Representatives on Thursday, Prodi said Cyprus would join the EU irrespective of whether a settlement had been reached, but urged both sides to use the window of opportunity offered by accession to reach a settlement.
Prodi said that if a solution were reached before Cyprus concluded membership talks by the middle of next year it would be possible to include the provisions of a political agreement in arrangements for accession.
“History would not look kindly on those who knowingly let this opportunity slip,” he said, having earlier expressed disappointment at the Turkish Cypriot side’s rejection of UN efforts to resume the talks.
Cassoulides described Prodi’s visit as “especially important”.
He said that Prodi had officially conveyed the European Commission’s view that Cyprus will be among those countries in the next wave of enlargement in 2004, solution or no solution.
Cassoulides said he considered that Prodi’s remarks were “evident of an improvement of his stance regarding Cyprus”. He recalled that the EC President had made “diplomatic statements in the past (about whether Cyprus would be able to join the EU before a political solution).”
Prodi left Cyprus on Friday after his high-profile two-day visit.
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.
