IT MAKES no sense for the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides to meet in New York later this month if no progress is achieved in reunification talks, President Demetris Christofias said yesterday, as differences between the two sides persist.
Commenting on an interview he gave to Turkish daily Hurriyet, Christofias repeated that it would not make sense having talks in New York with no progress. “Go there and do what? Repeat ourselves again?” he told reporters.
But he added that the Greek Cypriot side would attend the meeting nevertheless.
“I did not say the Greek Cypriot side would refuse to attend in such a case,” Christofias said.
“Of course we will go and voice our positions and express our good will and desire for a settlement of the Cyprus problem.”
Following his first meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu yesterday, Christofias said the two sides had basically repeated their positions.
“The differences remain,” he told reporters, as the UN are pushing the two sides to intensify their efforts to achieve some progress before the January 22 Greentree meeting between the two leaders and UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
The UN said their plan is to get the two sides to agree on core issues of the Cyprus problem by the end of the New York meeting.
Obviously they have agreed on some already but there are outstanding core issues in the areas of governance and power-sharing, property, territory, citizenship, so the focus is on them, said UN Special Adviser Alexander Downer.
“We hope that by the end of Greentree Two they will have more positive things to say about those issues that they certainly can at the moment,” the UN official said.
Downer said there were elements in all those chapters, which have been agreed but “there is still, in some cases quite a lot more work to be done and we really want to see that work done by the end of Greentree Two. So, no, we don’t have any plan for a Greentree Three.”
Asked if the UN expected “all this work” to be done in the next couple of weeks, Downer said it was not something that is a function of time.
“It is something which is a function of politics and decision-making. Can the compromises be found or can’t they? It’s as simple as that. Do you need time to do that? Well, you don’t necessarily — in theory — need a lot of time to do that,” he said.
“Once you have agreed on a design, it’s not going to take so long to fill in the detail. The detail is meaningless if you can’t agree on the design.”
The UN diplomat could not say what the next steps would be if the two sides fail to come to some sort of agreement at Greentree.
“I can’t really foreshadow at this stage what exactly would happen. But if they can’t achieve convergences on the outstanding core issues, then you obviously by definition have deadlock. In those circumstances, the Secretary-General will have to talk with the Leaders about what to do next,” Downer said.
Christofias blamed the apparent stalemate on the Turkish Cypriot side, saying they have backtracked on certain matters which had been agreed previously.
“I declare our side’s readiness to advance but on condition that one side will not want to impose its will on the other,” the president said.
Meanwhile Christofias said he wants to meet the country’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan face-to-face to explain the Greek Cypriot side’s positions.
In a separate interview with Turkish television network NTV, the president said however that Erdogan has rejected this request.
“I have proposed for the two of us to meet in person, even secretly,” he said. “I do not know how and from where he is informed of our positions. I also do not know to what extent the information he receives is correct and trustworthy.”
