THE UNITED Nations yesterday ruled out extending reunification talks beyond May 1, the date when the island is set to join the European Union.
UN special envoy Alvaro de Soto said the timetable agreed in New York last month was too tight to change.
“I don’t think we can conceive the possibility of extending talks,” de Soto told reporters after meeting Greek Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis.
“We are running up against a very, very tight calendar… both Cypriot parties are committed to negotiations on the basis of the plan that is before them,” he said. Both sides have been engaged in almost daily talks since February 19 but have so far made very little progress, raising suspicions that they prefer to leave the hard choices to Greece and Turkey and to the United Nations.
The two “motherlands” Turkey and Greece are due to join the talks on March 22 to help seal an accord. UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan will then step in to fill any remaining gaps in the peace plan which will go to a referendum on April 20.
De Soto said the location of the talks between the two ethnic communities and Greece and Turkey had not yet been determined.
“I am not in a position to answer this yet,” he said when asked whether the negotiations would take place in Zurich. “I have carried out soundings with Greek and Turkish Cypriots and we will come to a conclusion soon.”
Speaking from New York yesterday, Annan reiterated De Soto’s comments.
“Things are moving ahead slowly. We will stick to the timetable that we have agreed to, which also entails my own involvement if the parties do not reach an agreement between themselves by the 22nd or 23rd of March,” he told reporters.
Annan also said it was possible the negotiations might move to Switzerland from Nicosia when he enters the process later this month.
Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Mehmet Ali Talat yesterday denied suggestions that Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators were not seriously seeking a deal to reunite their island before it EU accession.
“An agreement is not easy. It seems as though everything will be left to Annan, but neither (Greek Cypriot President Tassos) Papadopoulos nor we want this,” Talat told reporters after talks in Ankara with Turkish officials.
Turkey accused the Greek Cypriot side this week of deliberately dragging its feet in the negotiations because their part of the island will join the European Union in May with or without a settlement.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul backed Greece’s call for the parties to stick to the UN’s tight timetable.
“I don’t think the timetable will be disrupted,” he said, adding it could be slightly modified with Annan’s approval if that proved necessary. “But the most important thing is to complete the process by May 1.”
