PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides yesterday presented rival Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash with a birthday present: a new pen to urge him to sign a political solution based on the Annan plan.
Denktash turned 79 yesterday and has been adamant that he would rather resign than sign an agreement based on the plan submitted by UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan as it stands.
The two leaders met yesterday at the UN-controlled Nicosia Airport as past of their thrice-weekly talks aimed at reaching an agreement by February 28, the UN deadline.
At yesterday’s talks the UN provided a cake to help along the celebrations but spokesman Brian Kelly could not say if it would be lit up with 79 candles. “All I can tell you is that it’s a raspberry and nougat cake,” he said.
Sources close to the talks told the Cyprus Mail that President Clerides, who will turn 84 in the next couple of months, would also be extending his best wishes, and a present to the Turkish Cypriot leader.
“The president is bringing him a gift. a pen to facilitate him in signing the agreement,” Papapetrou said.
After the meeting ended insiders said that Clerides jokingly told Denktash he was giving him the pen to sign something. “Denktash replied: ‘Obviously this pen won’t write’, but it was all in jest,” the insider said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
