By George Psyllides
THE United Nations are developing ideas to help bridge the gap between the positions of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide said on Wednesday, as talks between the two sides moved onto the next phase.
He said that he will share those when “the time is ripe” and reiterated that the settlement will be the result of an agreement between the two leaders and the people of Cyprus and that he is “here to help them to get there.”
Right now, he said, “I am working with the leaders and with respect for the leaders I will not go any further into that.” He did acknowledge however, that “there are a number of interesting ideas being developed”.
Eide was speaking after a meeting at the old airport in Nicosia between President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu who agreed to move to the next phase of structured negotiations and to hold meetings at least twice per month.
The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to lead the negotiations in an interdependent, results-oriented manner, through a win win approach, with the aim to reach a settlement as soon as possible.
Eide said “the reference in the document is win-win and the reason that the language win-win is used now is that I feel that there is an agreement now that there is more collective gain than collective loss.”
Obviously, he added, “negotiations are about exchanging views and reaching a mutual agreement at the end.”
The UN official said the phase that just finished allowed the two sides to table their positions, which “are now well-known to the parties themselves and to the other party.”
“The structured negotiations for which we have already talked about in the joint declaration of February 11 are really beginning now,” he said. “The preparatory phase is done and it is important for me to really underline the leaders agreed that this phase is now over and we are into something else which is a new phase of structured negotiations. Now actually we will put all the difficult questions on the table in a negotiating format.”
Eide also said that the UN will try to come up with ideas that can actually bridge those gaps based on the positions that were submitted.
“There are clear differences of opinion on some issues, but I want to convey as strongly as I can that I feel that we have two leaders who want to solve them and that they really think that solving them is better than the continuing status quo and there is a repetition today that the status quo as we know it today is unacceptable.”
For example, merging two separate economies into one would be to everyone’s benefit, he said – a win-win.
Eide said confidence building measures had not been discussed on Wednesday, as leaders focused on the big issues.
