Government disquiet at Irish ambassador’s comments

THE FOREIGN Ministry is not entirely satisfied with explanations given by Irish ambassador John Swift regarding a speech he gave in the north last week.

Swift was called to account on Tuesday after reports in the Turkish Cypriot press said he had described President Tassos Papadopoulos as an obstacle to a solution to the Cyprus problem.

He was also quoted as saying the biggest problem was that the majority of Greek Cypriots supported Papadopoulos.

During a meeting on Tuesday afternoon with Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Sotos Zacheos, the Irish ambassador submitted the clarifications requested by the government. He told Zakheos that his comments had been taken out of context by the Turkish Cypriot newspaper and did not reflect the balanced presentation he had tried to outline in his speech at a university in the north.

He also said that Ireland’s position on Cyprus was “firm and unchanged”.

In statements to the Cyprus News Agency, Swift said he had not seen all the press reports relating to his speech “but, from what I understand, some of the comments I made were profoundly misunderstood”.

Zacheos yesterday clarified that Swift had said nothing about the President being an obstacle to a solution, but admitted there were parts of the speech that the government was not in agreement with. “He did not say the President was an obstacle. Definitely on that he was right and he was misconstrued,” Zacheos told the Cyprus Mail.

“This is a democracy and everyone can express points of view but of course what we have to safeguard is the diplomatic etiquette. Ambassador Swift gave some explanations. We went thought his speech. There are assessments that we don’t share but as I said this is a democracy and we can disagree on the assessment, and there is phraseology that shouldn’t be used. There are some wrong assumptions on some issues and the feelings of the Greek Cypriots towards the Turkish Cypriots has not been reflected in the way it was presented.”

Swift declined to comment further on the issue yesterday.

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.