AS IF THE mounting problems facing Cyprus after the referendum were not enough, President Papadopoulos has decided to add to them by needlessly firing broadsides against the US administration. Thursday’s public outburst by the president was not only injudicious, it was totally unnecessary as it achieved nothing other than whipping up anti-US sentiment at home. All the parties followed his example, condemning the “provocative and unacceptable” statements made by Colin Powell and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Powell had addressed Mehmet Ali Talat as “Mr Prime Minister” during a meeting they had in Washington, while Boucher had referred to the “Greek Cypriot government” instead of the “Cyprus government”. These comments prompted Papadopoulos to make the following statement: “I think if these were intentional mistakes and not a slip of the tongue, they must be deemed by us as being very hostile acts and I would add that they are counter-productive…” Boucher responded by saying he was using the term descriptively and that the US recognised the Cyprus government. Papadopoulos, intent on keeping this non-issue alive, said on Friday words to the effect that Boucher’s clarification was unsatisfactory.
So will he continue firing broadsides against the US administration until he gets a satisfactory response, such as an unconditional apology? Or is he planning on retaliating with a similarly “hostile” act? This is the type of rhetoric and anti-US posturing employed in the past by leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi and everyone knows what horrific adventures they dragged their people through. As Papadopoulos felt so strongly about the comments he could have instructed the ambassador in Washington to make diplomatic representations to the State Department instead of using the issue to cultivate public hostility towards the US, which is not in Cyprus’ best interest.
The whole episode suggests a return to the past and a failure of our politicians to adapt to the changing times. We seem to be reverting to the foreign policy of the ‘inverted comma’, by which the entire government machinery is activated because some foreign official used politically incorrect terminology in reference to the ‘TRNC’ or did not put the titles of its officials in inverted commas. Perhaps, Powell and Boucher had made these mistake calculatingly, as a warning of US intentions, but Papadopoulos’ reaction was still out of all proportion. Did he believe that he could put the US in its place, with his public tirade?
A more plausible explanation, which is supported by the facts, is that he is cultivating a siege mentality among the people, making them feel that the whole world is against the Greek Cypriots because they exercised their “inalienable right” to reject a solution. Speaking at an official dinner on Thursday night, he referred to “the foreign friends who seem to have chosen the road of becoming censors and overlords over the political will of the Greek Cypriot people”.
What he fails to say is that the “foreign friends” feel cheated by President Papadopoulos — not the Greek Cypriot people – because despite giving them repeated assurances that the government would not block a solution, he did everything in his power to do so. Now, that we are suffering the consequences of the government’s fanatically partisan behaviour in the referendum campaign, Papadopoulos has decided to blame the “vindictive” foreigners who, in fairness, had repeatedly warned about the negative effects of a ‘no’ vote. The president had played them down at the time and is now realising that the “vindictive” foreigners will not let him off lightly.
The government has been forced by the EU to agree to measures for the Turkish Cypriots that it would have dismissed as completely unacceptable three weeks ago. But it has adopted these measures grudgingly and on Thursday received a mild rebuke from the Commission for not consulting it, as is standard practice, over how these would be implemented. This is indicative of the antiquated, isolationist, inward-looking mentality of the Papadopoulos government, which has failed to grasp that times have changed. We are now a member state of the EU and to survive and ultimately thrive in such a grouping we have to build alliances with other members, based on trust and a spirit of co-operation. This will not be achieved by the president lambasting our “foreign friends”, in official speeches.
Nor are we likely to win any friends by going on a public offensive when a foreign dignitary refers to Mehmet Ali Talat as ‘prime minister’, or the EU tries to assist the Turkish Cypriots. All we achieve is to illustrate our bad faith and push Cyprus deeper into isolation. At this time, President Papadopoulos’ foreign policy priority should be mending fences and building alliances (as he is unlikely to bring America to its knees), rather than antagonising the whole world with his Milosevic-style tirades against the hostile acts of the vindictive foreigners.
