By Jean Christou
EYEBROWS were raised yesterday when Dame Ann Hercus denied that she had anything to do with the omission of the missing persons issue from UN resolutions on Cyprus passed this week.
Dame Ann, Unficyp’s Chief of Mission, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry yesterday to explain how the omission came about, following reports that she had been responsible for it.
A statement issued by Unficyp after the meeting said Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides had “totally accepted” her assurances that the media reports concerning the issue were wrong.
However, speaking to reporters later in the day Cassoulides said the government had been told by members of the UN Security Council that the omission had been made at the request of Dame Ann.
“I have no reason not to believe her, but I have no reason not to believe the members of the Security Council either,” Cassoulides said. “There is apparently a misunderstanding somewhere.”
Earlier the government let it be known officially that it was not convinced of Dame Ann’s explanation.
Spokesman Costas Serezis confirmed she had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry.
“Mrs Hercus categorically denied that it was her initiative for the omission,” he said.
“Foreign Minister Cassoulides has said he has no reason not to believe her, just as he has no reason not to believe the French ambassador who was chairing the Security Council and who informed the Permanent Representative of the Cyprus Republic in New York that indeed this move had been made on the part of Mrs Hercus.
“He cannot believe them both.”
On Tuesday, the Security Council passed two resolutions on Cyprus, one relating to the extension of Unficyp’s six-monthly mandate and the second on Secretary-general Kofi Annan’s mission of good offices on the island.
In yesterday’s Unficyp statement, Dame Ann categorically denied the allegations made against her, blaming media reports for the furore.
The statement said Dame Ann had in fact been responsible for sending to New York the reference included in the most recent Unficyp report on the work of the Committee for Missing Persons. This reference is standard in all the Secretary-general’s six-monthly reports.
“She had also informed New York HQ for its background information, the fact that the government of Cyprus had itself announced that the exhumations in Nicosia which commenced a short time ago were not connected in any way in their view with the July 31 agreement and therefore logically could not be included in the report,” the Unficyp statement said.
It was referring to the exhumation of remains at two Nicosia cemeteries, currently being conducted by a team of international experts to determine if any of those buried there are on the list of 1,619 missing persons.
The exhumations are not part of the July 31, 1997 agreement between President Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to push forward the missing issue by exchanging information on the location of mass graves.
The deal fell through when the Turkish Cypriot side pulled out. However, the Cyprus government hoped the exhumation process would create a better climate and persuade the Turkish side to return to the July 31 agreement.
In the Unficyp statement, Dame Ann said it was for the Security Council and no one else to decide which elements in a field report it wished to comment upon, or to urge action on by means of a resolution.
But the government’s concern was not the omission of the reference to the exhumations, but the fact that the resolutions contained no reference at all to the missing persons, even though it did include standard references to the enclaved and other issues.
A previous UN resolution, No 1178, passed in June last year, calls for the implementation “without delay” of the agreement on missing persons of July 1997.
