Hopes Rise For Cyprus Settlement As New Talks Begin

by Lorys Charalambous, Tax-News.com, Nicosia

03 December 2001

Alvaro de Soto, the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser for Cyprus arrived on the island over the weekend ahead of new face-to-face talks between the leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities set to begin on Tuesday, in Nicosia, at which he will act as an observer. The meeting will be the first direct talks between President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash since 1997.

Prominent figures world-wide have welcomed the talks, and are urging the two ageing leaders to come to terms. In Washington State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed Tuesday's talks and confirmed that the Cyprus question would be on the agenda of discussions for US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Turkey next week. "We support the talks that are coming up between the communities in Cyprus, hosted by the UN, and we certainly look for efforts that can accelerate the momentum in those discussions," Boucher said. George Papandreou, the Greek foreign minister, described the talks as "an historic opportunity", saying: "We are in a phase where many conditions create the anticipation for a solution to the Cyprus issue." And Council of Europe Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer congratulated both parties for their decision to meet in the presence of the UN Secretary General's Special Adviser.

Prospects for the talks are mixed. The two leaders are old friends, and Mr Clerides at least is still keen to achieve a settlement by the time he completes his term and retires from politics in February 2003. Mr Denktash, widely seen as the intransigent party ever since he walked out of United Nations-sponsored indirect talks a year ago, proposed Tuesday's meeting under pressure from many in Turkey who don't think that independence for Turkish Cypriots is worth the sacrifice of Turkeyy's own EU aspirations. The Turkish government has welcomed Mr Denktash's move in spite of fiery public declarations to the effect that "he is not alone" in the face of EU pressure.

The EU has indicated it will admit Cyprus as a member in 2004, once it concludes accession negotiations at the end of next year. Greece says it will veto the enlargement process if Cyprus is not admitted, while Turkey has threatened to annex the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) if it goes ahead while the island is divided.

Turkish Cypriots are not optimistic about the talks, although they stand to gain greatly from any settlement. With a per capita income less than a third of that in the south, sleepy northern ports such as Kyrenia, with its Venetian fortress, seem untouched by the passage of the past three decades. No foreign soccer team may play in northern Cyprus, no airliner may fly there without touching down in Turkey first and goods are excluded from foreign markets.

Said Zafer Canturk, born in the year of partition (1974): "I've been hearing the same thing my whole life. I don't think anything will result from these talks." Many Turkish Cypriots also have reservations about giving up too much to secure EU admission. Most Turkish Cypriots are eager to join the EU rather than formally become a part of Turkey, but they also see a large degree of autonomy as a means of guaranteeing their physical security and avoiding economic domination by the larger, and now much richer, Greek Cypriot community. "I feel I'm a Cypriot a lot more than I feel I'm a Turk," says Salih Toros, a Turkish Cypriot businessman. "But I don't want to live under some Greek Cypriot authority either. I want to feel safe at home and not have some Greek policeman knocking at my door in the middle of the night."

Few on the island think that a return to internecine strife is likely, but they do need the assurance of a settlement of property claims covering tens of thousands of Greeks who left after 1974. This problem on its own is soluble - it just needs enough money thrown at it - but the underlying attitudinal difficulties are more intractable. Says Sener Levent, editor of opposition newspaper Avrupa: "I do not believe Denktash will achieve a solution. I do not believe he is a person who desires a solution."

Recommended