By Jean Christou
A THIRD joint meeting between Greek and Turkish Cypriot businessmen is to take place in Istanbul in mid-December.
The meeting will take place under the auspices of the
International Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Norway, whose director Dan Smith leaves Cyprus today after a three-day visit.
In an interview with the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Smith said he had met with businessmen from both sides during his visit, in an attempt to restart efforts for bi-communal contacts.
All bi-communal activities were stopped by the Turkish Cypriot side nine months ago after the EU’s Luxembourg decision to go ahead with accession talks for Cyprus.
The ban was put in place only a month after the historic first meeting between the businessmen in Brussels under the chairmanship of US envoy Richard Holbrooke.
But Smith said the second meeting in Oslo in June had shown that businessmen on both sides were interested in pursuing contacts.
“In the political sense, it (contact) is completely blocked. “Everybody knows that,” Smith said.
“Any movement will be the result of a political decision.
Our point is that the resolution of conflict is more than just a political question. It is social and economic as well.”
Smith said that if there was an easing of the political situation and if negotiations got into a positive track then it could be possible to develop real business relations between the two sides.
But he added that in the current situation, it was difficult to foresee any such progress in the near future.
Peace Institute officials put the current situation as low as two to three on a scale of one to ten.
But they are not deterred.
“With the knowledge we have of other such processes we don’t expect big successes (in Cyprus),” Smith said, adding their motto was “just to get on quietly with the work”.
“We don’t reject attention, but we don’t have to get the headlines… we have the stamina.”
Smith has been involved in peace processes in the Balkans, the eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Colombia.
He said that despite the lack of contact here, there were ways in which both sides could do things separately to get projects going.
One which has already been touted is a programme to protect and restore historical monuments all over the island.
“There is no trade element involved, but it still needs the co-operation of officials and has to have the will of the authorities on each side,” Smith said.
He added that apart from that, the main thing that could be done would be to launch a project that would involve conducting feasibility studies to explore what kind of economic co-operation there could be and to have these ideas developed in the event of a solution.
“There have to be some results (from the contacts), there have to be some steps forward,” Smith said. “They can be small steps and in a place like Cyprus small steps are big steps.”
Smith said the Greek and Turkish businessmen were only partly in touch because of the ban on contacts.
“If there’s any timing behind my visit it’s that now people are coming back from vacations and we want to see how to get the process moving.”
He referred to the previous successes of the group and particularly the extension of phone lines between the two sides through the UN “during this particularly difficult year”.
“One of the things… is helping people see new solutions to old problems and ways of helping people to have a dialogue, even when they disagree,” Smith said of the Norwegian Institute. “That allows us to facilitate processes that are difficult but which without us would be harder.
“A peace process which is only on the political side might well result in an agreement, but then you might find that the business community and others are totally unprepared.”
He said that among the Greek and Turkish businessmen, there were friendships that went back a long way. “They talk the same language and have a lot in common,” he said.
“They are clearly willing and wanting to keep it going. Of course, they want results and they want it quicker than is feasible, especially over issues about which they care very much.”
Smith said the situation in Cyprus had been unresolved for far too long and had further deteriorated this year.
“The worst prospect in the end is that if neither party on the island, or outside mediation brings about a result, then finally people turn their backs on the problem and say ‘okay, that’s the way it’s going to be’… a permanently divided island.”
