U.N. SPECIAL envoy for Cyprus Alexander Downer arrives on the island on Wednesday ahead of Friday’s talks between the two leaders.
Downer will arrive on the same day as Elders Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Lakhdar Brahimi, who will visit the island for two days to help boost the negotiations process.
The UN is not thrilled with the slow progress being made by President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, whose speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe further strained relations this week.
Downer was in New York earlier in the week to brief UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on progress since the leaders first met on September 3. They have held three meetings so far, and have been discussing power sharing and governance.
According to reports from New York, Downer feels the two sides have not shifted their views and positions, which has slowed the process down.
He also spoke of fatigue, saying if the negotiations continued at their current pace, the initial momentum would be lost.
Mediators are now deliberating on the possibility of putting the issues back to the working groups, letting them take care of the details and leaving the political decisions up to the two leaders.
Otherwise endless and open-ended debating of the issue would continue.
“I think there is a general feeling that the process could be moving much faster,” said a source close to the process. “It’s possible the talks might need to be more structured where the leaders could say ‘OK, we agree on this’ and then put it aside and move on to something else. They have not been doing this.”
The behaviour of the two leaders once they leave the meetings has also left mediators puzzled. While the atmosphere inside is said to be cordial, once they emerge, they begin criticising each other. Of the two leaders, Talat has been the more critical of the two.
After a meeting he is scheduled to have on Monday with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Downer will fly to Brussels to meet EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn prior to arriving in Cyprus.
