DEPARTING from Wednesday’s National Council meeting, EUROKO leader Demetris Syllouris told the waiting newsmen that the peace procedure “leads either to deadlock or a very bad settlement”. The time had come “to make an overall evaluation of things, take into account all conditions and the changes in the region and change strategy”. He did not explain what this new strategy would involve.
Some light was shed on the matter by the Honorary President of EDEK Dr Vassos Lyssarides who said, after the meeting, that the National Council “must become a medium for the discussion and the effort for establishing a common policy or a policy by majority, because this has not been happening”. He found it unacceptable that “we are informed about very basic things from the newspapers, without having discussed them in depth”.
Two months away from the scheduled meeting in New York, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to as the ‘end-game’ of the procedure, the party leaders were still calling for the forging of a common policy through discussions or for a change of strategy. According to the government spokesman, this was because not all the party leaders subscribed to the same definition of a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation (BBF). There needed to be a discussion of the matter so that everyone would understand the federation in the same way.
After more than 30 years of negotiations on a BBF, our party leaders still have different ideas about what it entails. Why, in those 30-plus years, did they never discuss what the provisions of the BBF they supported, should contain? Is now the time, after three years of negotiations – not to mention the preceding 30 years – to start discussing what we actually mean by the BBF?
If this happened, and the party leaders realised, after several days of intensive National Council discussions, that they did not really want a BBF as a settlement, what would they do? Would they adopt Syllouris’ suggestion for a change of strategy and inform the UN that they do not want to negotiate with the Turks any longer, because the BBF we had been negotiating for 30 years was not what we had in mind?
At Wednesday’s meeting, DIKO chief Marios Garoyian’s suggestion that President Christofias should snub the Secretary-General’s invitation to go to New York in January was also discussed in a positive climate, the government spokesman said. But this would be the cowardly approach. Surely Christofias should have the decency to inform Ban of our decision to his face. Perhaps he should not quit the talks, but merely ask Ban for a few months’ suspension of the peace procedure, so our party leaders could have the opportunity to agree on what kind of BBF they would accept.
