PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash met yesterday to discuss the issue of citizenship as part of their ongoing peace talks that began in mid-January.
The meeting was held in the presence of UN special envoy Alvaro de Soto.
The direct talks continue as the two leaders prepare for next week’s meeting in Paris with UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan, who hopes to give the deadlocked negotiations a new lease of life and help the two sides, through his special advisor, to crack the core issues of governance, security, territory and property.
Meanwhile, Britain’s envoy for Cyprus, David Hannay, arrived on the island yesterday to hold separate meetings with the two leaders and De Soto. Reports said that the visit is an expression of support to the UN efforts to break the deadlock and Annan’s decision to invite the leaders to a meeting in Paris next week.
Earlier in the day, the UN special envoy talked with Clerides for 90 minutes as part of regular contacts with both leaders during the peace talks. De Soto reported that the agenda for the Paris meeting on September 6 had already been prepared.
Attorney-general Alecos Markides said after the meeting with De Soto that the Republic of Cyprus would continue to exist as a state while the new constitution that would emerge from the talks would essentially be the solution of the political problem.
He said a UN plan for a solution was unlikely to be proposed until after Turkish elections in November. Regarding the question of sovereignty, a major obstacle in the talks, Markides said that as far as the Greek Cypriot side was concerned there would only be one state, with a single sovereignty.
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.
