Prospective envoy Downer still undecided

AUSTRALIAN former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has yet to decide whether to accept the post of special envoy for Cyprus, reports from Australia said yesterday.

Oddly enough, after announcing he would be taking up the post of the UN’s special envoy for Cyprus weeks before the UN did, a Downer spokesman told ABC News “Mr Downer is yet to decide whether he will accept…the posting.”

Downer, 56, officially bowed out of Australian politics yesterday after a lifetime in politics and nearly 12 years as Foreign Minister.

He had announced in London at the beginning of this month that he was stepping down from politics to take up the Cyprus post. “I will be working toward helping the Cyprus saga, working as an envoy to try and resolve that long standing issue,” he said.

In another article at the time he said of Cyprus: “It’s not going to be a cakewalk These things are always untidy. It’s never easy to do. We ended the civil war in Bougainville. We played our part in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not try to fix up Cyprus as well?”

Last Friday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon informed the Security Council he intended to appoint Downer as his new special envoy for Cyprus.

The announcement in New York put an end to weeks of speculation after Downer had pre-empted the UN. Yet since the official announcement, he has not uttered a word about it, even with the next meeting of the two leaders coming up next week.

President Demetris Christofias said on Saturday Downer would have only an auxiliary role to play in the Cyprus issue. He said Downer would be judged by his actions and his productivity.

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.