Leaders meeting postponed due to Eroglu’s health

THE CYPRUS leaders’ meeting, which was due to take place today, was postponed due to the health condition of Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu.

Eroglu is still recovering from open heart surgery that he underwent in Ankara just last week. He was only due to leave hospital yesterday evening to return to the north.

According to an announcement from UNFICYP, instead of the leader’s meeting, their respective aides Georgos Iacovou and Kudret Ozersay will meet at 10am in the UN-controlled Nicosia airport.

President Demetris Christofias said yesterday he was looking forward to his next meeting with Eroglu. Asked whether the delay in meeting would affect the planned meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Geneva at the end of January, Christofias said it was the UN which was calling the meeting, and it was the UN that would decide whether to postpone it.

‘As we have said many times, we are ready for any call from the Secretary-General. In his November report on his Good Offices Mission following a meeting with the two leaders in New York, Ban called for more intensified meetings between the leaders, and asked them to have a plan ready by the end of January to overcome obstacles in the negotiations.

Eroglu’s illness has meant that not as many meetings have taken place between the two leaders.

Yesterday in a speech to the students union POFEN, Christofias repeated that the Greek Cypriot side would not be tied to tight timetables or arbitration.

He also referred to the recent upsurge in extremist behaviour such as the attack on a Turkish basketball team and the fracas at the recent Rainbow Festival, in which a Turkish Cypriot was stabbed. Christofias said the people who take part in these incidents were only harming their own country by giving propaganda fodder to Turkey.

He also said that those in the political arena who do not want a bizonal bicommunal federation needed to realise that if this did not form the basis for a solution, then “we will lost half of our country”.

‘The bizonal bicommunal federation under certain terms and conditions, is the only way to reunite our country and our people,” he said.

 

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