IF THERE was one thing that shone brightly in the gruelling New York talks finally completed on Friday, it was the time-honoured political recklessness that characterises the political leadership of Cyprus. And I refer here to the Greek Cypriot side, as this time the Turkish side appeared literally transformed.
It can, in fact, be argued that progress this time was primarily owed to the Turkish side’s flexibility, a stance which caught our apprentice wizards completely by surprise, after they travelled to New York under the illusion that Rauf Denktash would once again throw them a lifeline.
This was be a major error of judgment, as New York-based correspondent Michalis Ignatiou presciently warned before the talks began.
President Tassos Papadopoulos, faithful to his hard-line, rejectionist past, tried everything in his power to kill off the prospect of an agreement before May 1. In the end, Kofi Annan’s decisiveness, combined with the pressure applied by the United States and the European Union, forced him to retreat and grudgingly accept, not only the procedure proposed from the start by the Secretary-general, but also the Turkish proposal for a quadripartite meeting.
The result of his irrational refusal to accept Annan’s proposal from the start was that in the end, he had to accept something that he considered far worse – a four-sided meeting that would be attended by Greece and Turkey. This was quite an achievement for his legendary political intelligence.
The incoherence of our president’s behaviour led him, in some instances, to self-ridicule. For instance, in his search for ways to put the Turkish side into a supposedly tight spot, he set as a condition a declaration that it would accept the Annan plan as the basis for the new round of talks. This is the very same Papadopoulos, who, when the Annan plan was first submitted in November 2002, was urging its rejection “without a second thought”.
It is the very same Papadopoulos who, last July, on two occasions publicly lambasted the plan because it “legitimised the fait accompli of the invasion”. And it is the same Papadopoulos who, only 80 days ago, declared he would not have signed the Annan plan in The Hague even if Denktash had agreed to do so.
How ironic therefore that our formidable president has forced Denktash to accept a plan that legitimises the Turkish invasion!
Another example of our president’s incoherence was the foolish insistence on eliminating the provision for the Secretary-general’s arbitration, by which Annan would fill in the blanks in the plan that the two sides failed to agreed upon. In the end, not only did he accept Annan’s arbitration, but in his attempt to have it removed from the procedure, he managed to give Turkey an arbitrating role as well. Turkey and Greece will now be given the opportunity to “fill in the blanks” in the plan before Annan assumes the responsibility of doing so. Had he not voiced objections to the arbitration by Annan, the quadripartite meeting, which he clearly did not want, could have been avoided.
Simple logic suggests that, with the agreed procedure, the best case scenario for our side is that we will arrive at a comprehensive settlement at the end of March that will not differ in any way from the Annan plan in its current form. Only a fool could expect Papadopoulos to be able to “improve” the plan unilaterally.
On the contrary, now that he has managed to clash with the Secretary-general, for no good reason, it is possible that we will suffer the fate of a football team that antagonises the referee before a match, by accusing him of bias. We could end up with a peace plan that is worse than the Annan plan for our side.
Then, we will be paying the price for the political recklessness that has characterised the behaviour of our political leadership, from the day the Annan plan was first submitted until today.
