THE TURKISH side is seeking to weaken the powers of the proposed central government as much as possible in the current Cyprus negotiations, President Demetris Christofias said yesterday.
Christofias said the UN process envisioned the evolution of the Cypriot state into a federation, and “if we are to have any chance of an agreement this year”, the Turkish side must negotiate within this framework, he said.
The comments came just a few hours before Christofias was due to meet Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat for the second leaders’ meeting this year, where discussions on governance were due to continue.
“The insistence of the Turkish side to weaken the role of the federal government and to endow the federated units with most of the functions and powers, usually reserved for federal Governments, create concerns and suspicions that the Turkish side is aiming for an entity approaching confederation rather than federation, as prescribed in relevant UN Security Council resolutions on Cyprus,” Christofias said during a speech accepting the credentials of the new Maltese ambassador to Cyprus Dr Richard Vella Laurent.
“Unfortunately, despite our intensive efforts, after four months of work, I do not have real progress to report. A number of secondary issues have been agreed but there remain, however, significant differences of approach to the issue of the powers and functions of the central government, the system of governance as well as on foreign relations,” Christofias added.
The President’s comments mirror information leaked to Anatolia News Agency last month, which claimed the Turkish Cypriot side was seeking as much autonomy as it could get in a federal solution.
One such demand was for separate Flight Information Regions (FIR), which the Greek Cypriot side argue is tantamount to asking for two separate states. Another comes under the topic of international agreements made by the federal state.
The Turkish Cypriot side wants a footnote to be included which says that the two constituent states can also make international agreements within their own spheres of authority. They also argue that the constituent states should be able to “implement federal government’s laws unilaterally in “appropriate situations”.
But the Greek Cypriot side says it should be the federal government which decides whether its laws should be implemented by the constituent states.
During the two-and-a-half-hour meeting between the leaders in the afternoon, they spent 30 minutes alone before negotiations got under way with UN Special Advisor Alexander Downer.
Downer said afterwards the discussions then focused on relations between a federal government and the constituent states.
“That was quite a long discussion about that,” he said.
Downer said there had also been a renewal of a discussion that had been held sometime earlier on deadlock resolving mechanisms.
“These discussions will continue again on Friday morning,” said Downer. “That will be the last discussion for the time being between the leaders on governance and power sharing and then in all probability at their next meeting they will work out the date for next meeting.”
Downer said that meeting would see the start of discussions on the property question.
