Paphos bishop: not saying president was drunk or anything when he agreed to go to Geneva

The Bishop of Paphos Georgios said he does not believe malicious rumours that President Nicos Anastasiades consented to the December 1 agreement due to inebriation, because Greek Cypriot chief negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis would have stopped him.

The comments, among others, caused a stir on Wednesday after daily Alithia published an article outlining suggestions the bishop submitted last month to the Holy Synod on the Cyprus problem.

Anastasiades was due to brief the Synod on Wednesday night ahead of the Geneva talks.

In an internet posting on the Paphos bishopric’s website, Georgios said that the president, on December 1, when he met for the first time with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci following the collapse of the Mont Pelerin talks had, “overturned everything at a dinner… a betrayal of principles and 3,500 years of Cypriot Hellenism”.

While the Greek Cypriot side was reiterating prior to the December 1 meeting that the government would return to the negotiating table given that the Turkish side would submit a map, and that a multi-party conference would convene only after an agreement was reached on territory, the bishop said, the president on December 1 “accepted what the puppet of the occupation has been trumpeting and announcing in coordination with Ankara for quite some time”.

“He (Anastasiades) accepted unconditionally the convening of a five-party and not a multi-party conference before a map was even submitted by Turkey. He ignored the Republic of Cyprus, considering it as defunct, and in practice accepted the guarantees,” the bishop said.

“It is said by many that his liking for alcohol led the president, during those late-night hours, to the unconditional acceptance of all the terms of the conqueror. I do not share that version because present at this dinner was also the negotiator from our side who neither resigned nor protested,” he said.

It seems, he said, that the president had set out to materialise “a programme that began in 2004, to justify his stance on the Annan plan”. Then Disy leader Anastasiades was among those who had supported the 2004 UN plan.

Even though he said he was not an expert in politics, Georgios said that just by monitoring current affairs, he was able to express the conviction that Turkey had set out to fulfil its plans for Cyprus through the dissolution of the Republic and the creation of a new state.

He added that the talks were going nowhere and suggested that the Church gather around it all those who shared the same positions irrespective of political affiliations.