Parties outraged at EU plan

POLITICAL parties were yesterday outraged at plans by the European Commission to go ahead with plans for direct trade to the north, saying it would not help bring about an eventual settlement.

AKEL spokesman Andros Kyprianou said no one had the right to overlook the Republic of Cyprus and UN resolutions. “Any decisions taken by the European Commission must take this reality into consideration,” he said, adding that such a move would not help create the conditions for a settlement.

Kyprianou said that there were other ways for the Turkish Cypriots to enjoy the fruits of EU accession and that the government had put forward a package of measures in the past, but that they had been blocked by Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash.

DISY deputy chairman Averoff Neophytou said the draft was “extremely worrying” and called for political unity to address it. However, Neophytou said he disagreed with any move to take the issue to the European Court of Justice, saying that political problems could not be solved the courts.

“We have invested a lot to improve our relations with the EU and we do not want to create a climate of litigation and find ourselves tangled up in a legal process,” he said.

The vice-president of DIKO, Nicos Pittokopitis, described the contents of the draft proposal as “blackmail”.

He said the Americans were behind the move as a means to reintroduce the Annan plan.

EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou said it was a very serious subject, and even more so since the danger emanated from the EU.

“It is imperative that we act immediately in a preventative way with the most powerful legal and political arguments that we have,” he said, adding that if it came to the point where all those options were exhausted, there would be no option but to resort to the Court of Justice.

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.