TURKISH CYPRIOT leader Mehmet Ali Talat did not attend a dinner last night with President Demetris Christofias and Lynn Pascoe but he invited the UN Undersecretary General to tea beforehand.
Pascoe arrived on the island late on Monday and met both leaders separately yesterday. It was hoped the visit would result in an agreed date for the leaders to meet.
However, not only was a date for the planned meeting in the second half of June not announced, but Pascoe did not manage to get Christofias and Talat in the same room for dinner.
Invites had been sent to both but Talat declined over a joint pact signed recently between Cyprus and the UK to improve relations, and over the wording of last Friday’s UN Security Council resolution on Cyprus.
Pascoe did have separate meetings with both leaders. He met Talat in the morning at 11am and Christofias at 3pm.
“The President and I are going to have dinner,” Pascoe said after meeting Christofias.
Asked if a date had been fixed for a leaders` meeting Pascoe said: “I’m not in a position to announce anything. Announcements come from them.”
After leaving the Presidential Palace at around 4.30pm, a UN spokesman confirmed that Pascoe would return to the north for a second meeting with Talat at 6.45pm. “He is having tea with Talat,” the spokesman said.
The Turkish Cypriot leader was asked in the morning whether he would be attending the dinner at the home of UN Special Representative Taye-Brook Zerihoun at UN headquarters.
“I am afraid I will not be there,” he told reporters.
Talat said his decision was based on many reasons, which had already been publicised.
Ask whether Talat’s non-attendance at the dinner could be regarded as a snub to the UN, a diplomatic source said: “No. It wasn’t a snub. He was invited to dinner and he said no.”
The invitation to tea was a way to “get around the scheduling difficulties,” the source said.
Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou would not be drawn on the dinner issue yesterday. He said the Turkish Cypriot leader could answer for himself.
Stephanou did say Talat had reacted badly to the memorandum of understanding signed between Cyprus and the UK and to the UN Secretary General’s recent report.
The spokesman said Christofias had a fruitful discussion with Pascoe, who had come to help the two sides to move forward.
“We believe that the positions we are submitting, which are above all UN positions and positions which the two communities have agreed on in the past, are totally realistic,” he said.
“If the position of the other side is to dismiss what we have agreed on and what the UN supports, then we reduce the prospects of reaching a Cyprus settlement.”
