Tassos confirms secret meetings with Serdar

THE GOVERNMENT yesterday confirmed that President Tassos Papadopoulos did meet secretly with Turkish Cypriot ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ Serdar Denktash and other representatives of ‘Prime Minister’ Mehmet Ali Talat both before and after April’s referendum.

Quizzed yesterday by journalists, government spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said Papadopoulos had met different Turkish Cypriot officials, including Serdar Denktash.
However the spokesman said he didn’t have any further details as to the place and time of the meetings.

The meetings came to light following a recent interview Papadopoulos had with the Khaleej Times where the President said he met a Turkish Cypriot leader “but I will not tell you who he is”.
“We asked for a postponement of the negotiations for a few months when we thought we would be able to solve all problems,” Papadopoulos was quoted as saying in the interview.

Government sources told the Cyprus Mail on Friday that there had been two secret meetings, one in Burgenstock where the final round of failed Cyprus negotiations were held, and one in Nicosia.
Denktash, son of Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash categorically told the Cyprus Mail last week that he did not take part in secret meetings with Papadopoulos but sources on the Turkish Cypriot side said “everyone knows it was Serdar”.

Chrysostomides said it appeared that when the President was not meeting representatives of the Turkish Cypriot side “there were complaints” and now that he has had meetings with them there are also complaints.

“The aim of the President has always been a solution of the Cyprus problem,” he said.
The spokesman also denied that the meetings had been held to postpone the referendum. He said they were to see how ready the plan was to go to referendum.

“The meetings prove that the President wants a comprehensive plan,” said Chrysostomides.
Papadopoulos said on Sunday that it was more important to pay attention to the content of changes to be introduced to the Annan reunification plan than to their number of changes.

”The number of changes to the Annan plan (UN solution plan) does not matter. The content of the changes that would render the plan functional and viable is important,” he said.

The President leaves on Saturday for New York to address the UN General Assembly.

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.