UN SECRETARY General Ban Ki-moon may visit the island before the end of the year, his special envoy to Cyprus said yesterday.
Alexander Downer was quizzed by reporters over whether Ban was planning to visit Cyprus any time soon.
“I am not sure that it’s very soon because you realise, the UN General Assembly is having its debate which begins in just over two weeks’ time, so the Secretary General needs to be in New York for that,” said Downer.
“We will see how his programme goes and how things go here. I would like to feel the Secretary General was able to come here before too long but we don’t have any particular time for it at the moment”.
“I would certainly hope it will be before the end of the year but according to my current planning, I expect to be in New York the week after next to see the Secretary General then and that’s the sort of thing we can talk about,” he added in response to questions.
Downer was speaking after he met President Demetris Christofias to discuss the cancellation of Thursday’s planned meeting between the two leaders, which didn’t go ahead over the doomed pilgrimage by Greek Cypriots to occupied Morphou to attend the Ayios Mamas service on Wednesday
Downer confirmed a new meeting had been scheduled between Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat next week.
He expressed his satisfaction at Christofias and Talat’s decision to talk about the failed pilgrimage trip over the phone.
“Obviously we are disappointed with the events that occurred over the past couple of days, I have made that clear,” he said, adding that there would be good days and bad days, as is natural in such negotiations.
“There’s a lot at stake here, there’s the future of Cyprus at stake here, so this is not a small matter, this is a very big issue, and a very serious issue,” he said.
“So you could not ever imagine the talks could go smoothly every single day. There was a bump in the road, and there will be more bumps in the road ahead, you can be sure of that. There will be problems that will arise from time to time.”
The important thing for everybody, he added, was to focus. “The central question is how to build the bizonal, bicommunal federation. That’s the central question and it is important that people do not get too distracted on the way through.”
Asked whether the Ayios Mamas issue would be discussed by the leaders when they meet next Thursday, Downer said: “I couldn’t predict what they will say, the meeting is in six days; a lot of water will flow under the bridge between now and then”.
The important thing was to keep the process going, he said.
Asked if he would help smooth things out, Downer said: “We can be helpful and we are helpful here and will continue to endeavour to be helpful”.
“I am not going to go into any of the details of what we have been discussing with the two sides, but I think they are developing their visions now on how they want the second round of the negotiations to progress. So I think it is perhaps judicious not to say too much about that”.
He said the second round would be different from the first. “They have quite a lot of convergence and they need to focus again on the areas of divergence and see how they can couple together agreements there and see how it goes,” he said.
