U.N. SECRETARY-general Kofi Annan is to send a letter to the leaders of both sides urging them to press on with exhumations that may uncover the remains of both Greek and Turkish Cypriot missing persons, the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) said yesterday.
Quoting unnamed sources, CNA said the letter would be in the spirit of earlier correspondence with the two sides in December 2003.
President Tassos Papadopoulos agreed to Annan’s terms for exhumations in the government-controlled area, but veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash has yet to respond to the UN Secretary-general’s letter.
Turkey’s “declaration of intention” presented to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in early June with regard to the issue of missing persons is considered by various circles as indication, but no proof, of its intention to respond to Annan’s call, CNA said.
Last month, it was reported that Turkish Cypriots had claimed to have witnessed Greek Cypriots being buried in mass graves in at least two areas in the north in 1974. Both sites have since been cemented over and built on.
The government has exhumed and identified the remains of a large number of Greek Cypriot missing persons in the past five years. So far the remains of around 220 people have been exhumed, with 136 identified and returned to their families.
No exhumation of Turkish Cypriots, missing since the intercommunal strife in the early sixties, has taken place yet, although the government last year carried out an exploratory excavation at Alaminos village where remains were found.
However, no identification was possible because neither the necessary blood samples nor the ante mortem information were available because Turkish Cypriots refused to provide them.
Last week, informal meetings took place between anthropologist William Haglund, head of the team that carried out the previous round of exhumations, and Cypriot government officials. Haglund has also met with members of the Turkish Cypriot community dealing with this matter, CNA said.
Commenting on the lack of enthusiasm from the Turkish Cypriots, Haglund said: “There is hope that there might be willingness on the part of the authorities but that remains to be seen. I see a lot more willingness on the part of the families on the other side, they are more interested, every mother wants her child,” he said in an interview with the news agency before leaving the island.
Haglund, who works for the international organisation Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), said he expected to return to Cyprus in early September to continue his work.
He said the object of the exercise was not to seek accountability for the death of a person but to alleviate the suffering of families who have been anxiously waiting for concrete evidence about the fate of their loved ones.
“I want to satisfy the need of every mother to have the remains of her loved one back so that they can be buried according to their tradition and religious rites,” Haglund said.
He acknowledged that the Turkish Cypriot side had not done a very good job of identifying the location of graves and said this was an important part of the process that needed to be addressed before exhumations in the occupied north take place.
Nicos Theodosiou of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons said that the Committee and the government had agreed on specific steps with regard to future strategy.
“We have already begun working on what was agreed,” he said, but refrained from elaborating on the matter.
Theodosiou said the Committee was cautious about Turkey’s intentions. “Words are no longer enough. If we do not see any practical moves, we cannot be optimistic,” he said, but acknowledged that there was a different verbal approach on the part of Ankara on this issue.
The Director of the Diplomatic Office of the Cyprus President, Tassos Tzonis, told CNA: “Our position is to solve all the cases of missing persons, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.”
“The government recognises the right of Turkish Cypriot relatives of missing persons to be informed about the fate of their loved ones and provides to them the same facilities and services it does for relatives of Greek Cypriot missing,” he said.
He said many Turkish Cypriots had already given blood samples, a move he described as “an expression of their will to assist in the exhumation and identification process of loved ones, believed to have been killed during past conflicts”.
“The government will honour its obligations towards these people and will proceed, as soon as possible, with everything that has been agreed, irrespective of whether the other side gives its consent,” Tzonis said.
