AKEL rejects Turkey’s proposal for ‘four-way dialogue’

PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias’ proposal to meet directly with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the Cyprus problem has been met with a counter-proposal for “a four-way dialogue”.

In the second part of an interview given to the Athens correspondent of Turkish newspaper Sabah, Christofias is said to have proposed a bilateral meeting to Erdogan during a 15-minute conversation they had on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session last month in New York.

Christofias is reported as saying that the Cyprus problem will only be solved if Turkey shows some initiative, which why he proposed to meet the Turkish premier directly.

Erdogan yesterday made a counter-proposal of “a four-way dialogue” in a speech he gave to the Fourth plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, which opened in Istanbul. The dialogue would most likely involve the two sides in Cyprus plus Turkey and Greece.

AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou yesterday rejected Erdogan’s proposal, saying that Turkey’s often-stated position of including Turkish Cypriot representatives in formal talks “has not been accepted nor is likely to be accepted by our side, for the simple reason that the Turkish Cypriot community cannot be treated on an equal basis with the Republic of Cyprus”.

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