The continuation of the Cyprus talks is a one-way street for the Greek Cypriot side, it said on Tuesday.
Government Spokesman Prodromos Prodromou and Greek Cypriot Chief Negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis held a joint news conference to brief the media on Anastasiades’ meeting on Sunday with UN envoy Jane Holl Lute to whom he put forward his ‘new ideas’.
These included explaining his proposal for a more decentralised federation and way forward on the issue of political equality that would see Cyprus become a parliamentary democracy with a rotating prime minister and a symbolic presidency and vice presidency, the former of which would be always a Greek Cypriot and the latter always a Turkish Cypriot.
“Since the day of the collapse [of the talks] in Crans-Montana our side has been constantly striving to find a way to continue the negotiations,” said Mavroyiannis. “We believe that for us it is the only way and we do not believe that there are actually any other options. We had never accepted the idea that we needed this period of reflection mentioned by the UN Secretary-General but since this was the logic that prevailed, we had to live with it.”
Mavroyiannis said the UN Secretary-General was now interested to see whether there was a willingness on the part of all involved to continue negotiating and to ensure that “where we failed in Crans-Montana we would now have a chance of success.
“And so whenever we all say we want to negotiate, immediately comes the next question; ‘what makes you think this time we will succeed where we failed last time?’” Mavroyiannis said.
It was precisely in this context that the president has come up with several “new, innovative ideas” so that the UN could be convinced that indeed this time we have more of a chance to succeed.”
“This is the logic of all ideas and all our efforts,” he added. “As Einstein said, it is futile to think that if you ask the same question a thousand times every time you will get a different answer. We need to change some of the data, you must do something in order to establish a state of affairs that allow an approach that is more relevant. This is our effort.”
Mavroyiannis said the Turkish side was clearly stalling and the Greek Cypriot side was in a situation where it had to continue to convince everyone of its goodwill “but also that through ideas, our proposals and in general our approach we can create the circumstances and conditions to negotiate with serious chances of success”.
The Greek Cypriot side, he added, did not wish to act “just for show. We do not expect too much from the other side at present, but we expect at least it be accepted that in the present circumstances there is no other way forward apart from the continuation of negotiations within the UN framework and based on the mission of the Secretary-General’s Good Offices and fully utilising the Guterres framework and all the very positive work done over the years.”
