Cyprus Negotiations Are Ever More Complex And Confused

by Lorys Charalambous, Tax-News.com, Nicosia

13 February 2003

It has become likely that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will visit Cyprus at the end of February after already-scheduled visits to Turkey and Greece, and there is also a growing likelihood that the UN will issue a third, and supposedly 'final' version of its reunification plan before then.

Direct talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders Glafcos Clerides and Rauf Denktash have been continuing, but have apparently made little progress, despite optimistic noises coming from the UN mediators. Last week, Denktash condemned the UN's proposals in harsh terms, but the reality by now is that he is a sideshow, and the substantive talks are taking place in an international discussion between Turkey, Greece, the EU, the US and Cyprus.

At all events, the existing 28th February deadline seems impossible, but efforts are likely to continue right up to the moment at which Cyprus will sign its EU accession treaty in April.

Negotiations are not made any easier by the upcoming presidential election in Cyprus. Incumbent Glafcos Clerides has offered himself for a shortened term of 18 months to see through the reunification process, but polls suggest that the likely victor will be opposition party DIKO leader Tassos Papadopoulos, who is thought to have a considerably more hawkish view of the Turkish question than Clerides. But Papdopoulos has just covered himself in something approaching ignominy by proposing a debt freeze for investors who were caught short in the Cyprus Stock Market's collapse three years ago. This rank piece of populism has been comprehensively shot down by everybody from the IMF to your correspondent's cleaning lady.

The outcome of the bad-tempered presidential contest, whose first round of voting is due on Sunday, will have a substantial bearing on the reunification negotiations. Perhaps only if Clerides wins will the impact be other than negative.

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