US AMBASSADOR Frank Urbancic, despite representing the most powerful state in the world, is the most low profile ambassador currently serving in Kyproulla.
He could be shy by nature – not a character trait often associated with Yanks – but it is also possible that he decided to make himself scarce because of social circumstances. He is after all serving in country with a hostile, communist regime, led by a US-hating red – with 10 honorary doctorates – who still feels deeply nostalgic for the glory days of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
Urbancic’s cables to Washington about the crazy goings-on in the People’s Republic of Kyproulla were recently released by WikiLeaks and made for fun reading. The guy writes great copy (if he is the writer of the leaked cables) and makes astute observations about our people-friendly government’s lunatic diplomatic choices.
In a cable to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ahead of Markos Kyprianou’s visit to Washington, he wrote in April 2009: “Since Christofias’s election in February 2008, however, we have witnessed an ideologically-motivated attempt to turn back the clock to the heydays of the Non-Aligned Movement. He has publicly praised Fidel Castro, welcomed a new Venezuelan Embassy in Nicosia, lauded Iran, and vilified NATO and the Partnership for Peace (PfP).”
He also wrote about the comrade’s “commitment” to President Medvev to promote Russia’s European security proposal within the EU and “his outreach to Hugo Chavez and Venezuela,” before making the following suggestion:
“While the questionable policy shift is the president’s making, you should call Kyprianou on it, urging him to use the new and/or upgraded relations with rogue states to demand better behavior and improvements in their abysmal human rights records.”
I doubt Kyprianou would even have mentioned this part of the conversation, if it took place, to the great friend of the rogue states.
I HAVE to admit my preference for the gossip element in the cables. Giving Hillary the lowdown on Kyprianou he wrote:
“The relationship between the Cypriot president and his FM is icy by all accounts. Their Cyprus problem philosophies are miles apart, for example, with Kyprianou much more the hard-liner.” This is a bit unfair, as the only thing Markos seems to take a hard line on nowadays is his travels around the world.
Comparing Markos and the comrade, he wrote: “The small-townish, USSR-educated and far from eloquent Christofias feels a bit diminutive next to his aristocratic minister.” The aristocratic minister, in contrast to his boss, went to all the right schools, including Harvard and was groomed for politics from an early age, wrote Urbancic and added: “His name recognition here is such that pundits refer to him only as ‘Markos’, a la Elvis or Madonna.”
I would have loved to have seen the face of the insecure comrade, who considers himself a charismatic statesman, when he read this delightful, politely-worded, hatchet job. Here was the US ambassador, saying he was an unsophisticated, inarticulate, poorly-educated peasant, who had an inferiority complex, because of his lack of class.
I disagree with Urbancic. While there is ample justification for our comrade to suffer an inferiority complex, his self-belief is unshakeable. He has never felt diminutive next to anyone, for one simple reason – his small-townish mentality allows him to think he is smarter than everyone. And all those universities who gave him honorary doctorates cannot be wrong.
THE ARISTOCRATIC, hard-line traveler got a bit of a stick for his visits abroad on Friday, with Politis accusing him of conducting ‘weekend diplomacy’. The paper reported that our very own Elvis figure had a habit of arranging his visits abroad to include weekends. He had been abroad for 36 weekends.
It was a disgraceful, below-the-belt blow against poor old Markos, whose aristocratic background had taught him always to put service to country above everything else. As the foreign ministry statement, issued after the report, explained “a large number of the weekends that are being referred to concern service trips to Arab states and Israel, where weekends are working days.
“This offers the possibility of the weekends being put to use for meeting and contacts which are carried out at the expense of the Foreign Minister’s personal, free time.”
Our establishment has not always been kind to Markos, but it would like to express its gratitude for his willingness to sacrifice his weekends in Arab states, in the service of his country.
COMRADE Tof heads to Geneva on Thursday for another meeting with the UN Secretary-General and Eroglu, praying for one thing – no surprises. Both his spokesman and his AKEL flunky Andros have repeatedly said there would be ‘no surprises’ in Geneva, more in hope than in certainty.
What if Ban Ki-moon surprises us by proposing a compromise on the thorny issue of the police, which has been the subject of the Tof-Eroglu negotiations for weeks? What is there to agree about the police – apart from how the rusfeti would be divided between the two sides – that has required weeks of negotiations?
The police issue was discussed by the two leaders for the nth time on Thursday and again by their aides on Friday, but there was no agreement, because of Turkish intransigence.
MEANWHILE our side will practice what it preaches in Geneva and spring no surprise on anyone. As Phil reported on its front page on Wednesday, the comrade would go “To Geneva with three ‘nos’”.
He reportedly told the National Council he would say ‘no’ to any time-frame linked to the start of Cyprus’ EU presidency, which is only a year away. The two sides might not even have closed the chapter on the police by then. He would also reject UN arbitration and an international meeting.
The ‘no’ diplomacy was welcomed by DIKO spokesman Fotis Fotiou, who cited it as proof that his party and the government had a common outlook on the Cyprob, the only exceptions being the detested rotating presidency and the settlers. Both parties are also staunch supporters of not changing the current talks’ procedure, because it has proved a thoroughly reliable method for achieving nothing.
FRANK Urbancic had figured out Tof’s game. In one of his cables to Washington in 2009, he wrote: “President Christofias is invested heavily in getting a deal – some say he has staked his legacy on it. History shows, however, that G/C leaders lose little electorally by taking a hard line in the talks. Christofias will not walk away from the table; the risk is that the talks could die slowly, with G/Cs citing Turkish and T/C ‘intransigence’ as the cause.”
In his briefing of Hillary ahead of her meeting with Markos, he also urged her to ask our aristocratic minister, what our government exactly had in mind when calling on the US to exert pressure on Turkey on the Cyprob.
“Kyprianou has not specified what he would have us press Ankara to do, however,” he concluded. I thought this would have been obvious – Ankara should be pressured into allowing the talks to die slowly as a result of Turkish intransigence, instead of constantly agitating for a premature death.
AT THE last meeting he had with the members of the diplomatic corps, the comrade kept boasting about his commitment to principles and that the Cyprob solution should be based on principles.
One ambassador got so exasperated with the presidential pontificating that he told the comrade that never in his life had he heard so much talk about principles than in the three years he had served in Kyproulla.
INTERESTINGLY, on Wednesday the UN General Assembly voted again on the resolution demanding the return of all the people who had been driven out of their homes in Abkhazia, Georgia during the Russian invasion.
The resolution “recognised the right of all refugees and internally displaced persons and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity, to return to Abkhazia, Georgia… The Assembly underlined the urgent need for the rapid development of a timetable to ensure the prompt voluntary return of all refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes.”
The Tof government, which is always guided by high moral principles, did not support the resolution. It abstained, because Abkhazian refugees were kicked out of their homes by Russia, and not Turkey, which also abstained.
THE GOVERNOR of the Central Bank Athanasios Orphanides must have had the surprise of his life last Monday evening when he was entertaining a group of hacks at Nicosia’s popular Romantica Restaurant and saw his nemesis Charilaos, arrive for dinner.
Our good friend was accompanied by his wife and a young couple. On leaving, the hacks passed by his table and he assured them that his presence was sheer coincidence as he did not know Orphanides would be there. Charilaos, who was in a friendly and chatty mood, decided to explain to the hacks his thinking behind €1,000 levy on all companies.
Apparently, the biggest auditing firm PWC, represented 11,000 companies. This would mean the state could collect €11 million from PWC. As the firm had an annual turnover of €120m it was financially robust enough to absorb the cost of the levy, without passing it on to its customers, who may have objected to it. The firm would be able to recover most of the cost by imposing other service charges to its customers, cheeky chappy Charilaos reasoned.
MRS STAVRAKI meanwhile told the hacks of a very unpleasant experience ‘poor’ Charilaos had at a Nicosia party the previous week. There were many accountants at the party and they all turned on ‘poor’ Charilaos, slamming his thousand euro levy and telling him “you will destroy us”. Mrs Stavraki said the accountants were not joking but were horribly nasty and she felt very sorry for her hubby.
“Can you believe these accountants, sitting around smoking huge cigars and claiming Charilaos would destroy them,” said an indignant Mrs Stavraki.
‘DIRECTORATE organises the bankruptcy of Cyprus,’ read a headline in the last issue of the weekly commie rag Gnomi, which has the role of throwing dirt at any critics of the comrade president and AKEL.
According to the unreliable rag, one serving state official (Orphanides) and a former official (Michalis Sarris) plus two politicians were “systematically trying to cause worries to foreign investors so they would not buy government bonds”. Meanwhile the Central Bank had “leaked misleading information” to prevent investors from buying Cyprus bonds and discouraged Cypriot banks from taking part in the bond auction.
The objective of the directorate was to bankrupt Kyproulla, claimed Gnomi, by preventing it from raising funds in international markets, through the circulation of rumours that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Why these conspirators wanted to bankrupt the country, Gnomi did not inform us. And to be fair, the paper’s hero, comrade Tof does not need anyone’s help. His bankruptcy policies have been the most successful policies of his administration.
WE WANTED to write a few words of support for Michalis Ignatiou, whose book about the Annan plan briberies we are still eagerly awaiting, but we have run out of space. We shall only repeat the headline in Monday’s Phil which reported a “US plot for the ‘disappearance’ of a journalist”. The journalist in question was the heroic Ignatiou. More about this despicable US plot and how it was thwarted by the fearlessly, brave Ig, in next week’s shop.
THE Sunday Mail would like to withdraw unreservedly any comments in articles published in the Tales from the Coffeeshop column on 17/05/2009 and 17/01/2010 to the extent that these caused offence to Dr Claire Palley. It would also like to clarify that it had no intention of questioning Dr Palley’s indisputable honesty, integrity or qualifications.
