THE GOVERNMENT said yesterday it would be making a demarche to the US State Department over classified documents apparently advising American officials that they could visit the island via the illegal airports in the north.
The story was broken by Michalis Ignatiou, a Phileleftheros correspondent in the US, who revealed that US officials came to the above conclusion after a meeting in 2004 with former Cyprus Ambassador to the United States Erato Markoulli.
This raised more than a few eyebrows, as the official government policy is that US dignitaries wishing to cross to the north should arrive via a port in the south on a tourist visa.
An experienced diplomat, Markoulli said this week she explained the government’s position clearly to US diplomat Edwin Nolan. This left three possibilities: either Ignatiou’s sources were unreliable, or Markoulli’s explanation was misinterpreted, or deliberately twisted.
The implication of this last option was that the US State Department was consciously trying to blindside the Cypriot government.
But on Monday the Foreign Ministry issued a sternly worded statement against Mega news channel, which first aired Ignatiou’s report from Washington. The ministry berated the station for broadcasting the story without first clearing it with the government, protesting that the “truth had been distorted”.
The Foreign Ministry categorically denied that Markoulli had ever misstated government policy.
Ignatiou responded by claiming he was in possession of the official documents, which had been somehow leaked, and was perfectly willing to give them to the Foreign Ministry to prove their authenticity.
“But I refuse to be censored,” he said on the evening news bulletin.
“It’s not the journalists’ fault if the government has poor relations with the US,” he added.
Yesterday, Government Spokesman George Lillikas toned down the rhetoric, clarifying the administration was not at loggerheads with the media, but rather “with the authors of the contentious documents, whoever they may be”.
But Lillikas was at pains to explain how the issue arose, although he ruled out that Markoulli was the culprit.
“I find it extremely hard to believe that a seasoned diplomat, with so many years of service, could have made such a mistake. I think that’s inconceivable and implausible,” he said.
“I therefore believe that the document was an attempt at promoting US policy [regarding visits to the north]…”
The government would get to the bottom of the affair by making remonstrations, he added.
Lillikas was then asked whether the government was alarmed by the fact that all too often foreign officials seemed to miscomprehend its positions.
“This has happened very rarely,” he said.
The reporter asking the question was referring to at least two occasions where foreign dignitaries apparently committed bloopers after talks with the government.
One such “blunder” occurred last March when Polish President Aleksander Kwaniewski, on a visit to Cyprus, said during a news conference that President Papadopoulos had sent to the UN Secretary-general the government’s positions in writing. The government later came out to say that Kwaniewski was told no such thing.
The more recent example was the debacle over British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s visit to the north, when the government said it had changed its policy regarding the meeting of foreign officials with Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. The British government was apparently unaware of this change.
“We do not expect foreign diplomats or leaders to know the Cyprus problem in minute detail, or to be as familiar with our phraseology as we are,” said Lillikas.
