Akel wants China to join talks in Geneva

AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou said his party had asked China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to participate in the Cyprus multinational conference in Geneva on January 12.

“I must say we saw a positive response,” he said, after a meeting with a Chinese delegation headed by the deputy minister for justice. Kyprianou said the delegation will convey the request to the Asian country’s leadership.

On the ongoing debate with hardline parties that oppose the ongoing peace process, Kyprianou said certain comments really made him wonder.

“I heard with great surprise a party leader saying our whole stance and behaviour was characterised by defeatism, fear, etc. This has nothing to do with reality,” Kyprianou said.

“Let me repeat: only damage was done as regards the effort to solve the Cyprus problem whenever our side engaged in machismo and bravado, taking us back many steps.”

And whenever the negotiations resumed, the result was to start from a worse position, the Akel leader said.

Kyprianou said that during Wednesday’s national council session at the presidential palace, he gave his fellow politicians a series of failures to prove his point.

Going back to 1992 when the late Glafkos Clerides buried the Gali plan; then in 1998 it was the S-300 missile crisis; and, after July 8, 2006 when the late Tassos Papadopoulos set a large number of conditions for the talks to restart.

“The result was discussing the procedure to resume the talks for one-and-a-half-years without being able to,” he said. “And of course the worst thing at that time was the unbearable pressure on us for direct trade.”

It was the only matter on the agenda and it was at that time that the EU decided to grant CYP£259m annually to the Turkish Cypriot community.

“We are at a critical and decisive phase … there are many difficulties (but) there are prospects. We must work towards maximising the prospects and minimising the difficulties,” Kyprianou said.