THE NEW crossing point at Zodhia will not open until it is established that both sides are ready, the UN said yesterday.
Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Ferdi Sabit Soyer said on Thursday that the Morphou district checkpoint would open on August 31 whether the Greek Cypriot side was ready or not. But UNFICYP yesterday disputed this, while the Greek Cypriot side said the crossing point would not be fully operational until the end of September.
UN spokesman Brian Kelly told the Cyprus Mail: ”It takes two points to cross a checkpoint. In this instance it’s a matter of the two sides being in agreement.
“While it is commendable that the Turkish Cypriot side has completed arrangements, the opening of the checkpoint depends on whether it is in a state of equal readiness.
“We are still in communications with both sides,” he added.
The issue of when the checkpoint will open has been the subject of bickering between both sides for over a year, with the Turkish Cypriot side this week accusing the Greek Cypriots and the EU of doing next to nothing to complete the necessary work.
Through the UNOPS programme, Partnership For The Future (PSF), the EU has agreed to part-fund work that the Greek Cypriot side needs to complete in the buffer zone. According to Presidential Spokesman Marios Karoyan, the EU has donated £300,000 towards the project, which is costing the government a total of £1.5 million, a substantially greater amount than the 700,000 new Turkish lira spent on the other side.
The government has responded to allegations that they are dragging their feet by pointing out that it has been a far simpler process on the Turkish Cypriot side.
“The Turkish side has appropriated land which does not belong to them, but on our side, we have had to follow instructions and take authorisation to finance the project,” Karoyan said.
“The Turkish Cypriots have many times said that they are ready to open a crossing and if they’re ready for August 31, they clearly haven’t got a problem with doing this.
“We have to build a 2km road and we’ve had to finance this via the PFS project, so we had some serious decisions to make; we had to appropriate funds and we’ve had to apply all the correct legal procedures,” he added.
When asked what work remained to be done, Karoyan said that the EU funding had been received, that they had finished the main infrastructure and that only the 2km long road remained to be built.
Karoyan stated that the checkpoint would be open on September 1 and 2 so that Cypriots could take part in the feast of St Mamas in Morphou, but it would not be fully operational until the end of September.
“The money is there, but we have to appropriate all the land, we’ve had to make government decisions and we have informed the UN who are proceeding quickly to integrate the project.
”The final decision will be made by the UN,” he said.
The Zodhia crossing is to be the first in the west of the island and will relieve some of the traffic currently focused on the Ayios Dhometios checkpoint in Nicosia.
Karoyan also rejected Soyer’s recent accusations that the government was not truly working for the reunification of the island. He pointed out that the idea to open the checkpoint had been initiated by the Cypriot government in July 2004, with a proposal to open eight new crossings at once. The initiative was rejected by the Turkish Cypriot authorities, who claimed that this would entail high policing costs.
As regards the opening of the Ledra Street crossing in old Nicosia, the UN said this hinged on the opening of Zodhia. Soyer said this week that there remained a lot of mine clearing to be done in the area, while Karoyan said it rested on convincing the Turkish military, who have camps in the area.
