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14 February 2004
Source: Cyprus Mail
Author: Jean Cristou
A hollow victory? How a 90-minute meeting turned into an unholy trial
IT FELL a few hours short of being ‘The Valentine’s Day Deal’ but may
yet have the ignominy of being known as ‘The Friday the 13th Agreement’
Whether or not that will prove prophetic remains to be seen. It started
off on Tuesday night with what was meant to be a one-off meeting to
decide the terms for the resumption of talks. Kofi Annan simply asked
the sides to work within a tight timetable, show the necessary political
will, and commit to referenda irrespective of the out come of
negotiations. In addition to this Ankara had offered last month to allow
Annan to fill in the blanks on unresolved issues. None of the terms
were acceptable to the two sides. The two-hour meeting produced no
results. At Wednesday night’s meeting Denktash pulled out the roadmap he
had been given by Turkey and presented it asking that the Greek Cypriot
side come back with its answer. The Turkish proposals were similar to
Annan’s but included the Secretary-general filling in the blanks with
the aid of Greece and Turkey instead of alone. That meeting lasted 90
minutes – or so we thought. It was revealed yesterday that the meeting
actually lasted only 15 minutes because upon hearing Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s very public warning that he better not mess
up, Denktash decided to fly home. He was talked away from the edge by
diplomats and a phone call from Erdogan. With Denktash back in line, a
third meeting was scheduled so the Greek Cypriot side could respond to
the Turkish side’s proposals but instead President Tassos Papadopoulos
decided to ask that the EU be given a role, which threw everyone off.
The Turkish Cypriot side obviously thought it was going to be a done
deal. Annan liked Turkey’s ideas so it was just a matter of the Greek
Cypriots agreeing or disagreeing. If it was the latter, so much the
better. The Turks could be the good guys for a change. So sure were they
of their favourable position, the Turkish Cypriot delegation had packed
their bags to come home – but ended up missing their flight. The EU
demand by the Greek Cypriots resulted in 12 straight hours of
negotiations with the big guns – Greece and Turkey – called in. That was
at 2.30am Cyprus time. The four parties had separate rooms and UN envoy
Alvaro de Soto spent his time shuttling between all four to work out a
compromise deal. Yesterday when a Turkish journalist said US State
Department Coordinator Thomas Weston had spent more time shuttling
between the rooms, De Soto retorted: “Were you on the 33rd floor? I’m
just trying to guess how you could possibly establish the comparison.
“Tom Weston and I are not in competition but I’m just curious about how
you reached that conclusion. I assure you we were not sleeping.” The
Secretary-general was sleeping. “Yesterday when I left at 8pm (New York
time) we had a text that the parties were looking at and they all had
rooms on the 33rd floor. The four delegations had a room each, and
Alvaro was shuttling between them to see they would agree to the
proposal I had put to them, and they worked rather late. I think some of
them had only about two hours of sleep, but they are much younger than I
am and they can take it. In the end we did get the agreement and we met
at 10.30 this morning and everybody signed on,” Annan said at his news
conference yesterday announcing the deal. It was patently obvious that
the UN was not letting the sides leave New York without a deal. UN
Deputy Secretary-general Sir Kieran Prendergast said early yesterday
that talks would “last as long as it takes” A spokesman for the Greek
Foreign Ministry, told the press after more than twelve hours of
shuttling that the Greek Cypriot side had submitted three compromise
proposals, which were turned down by the Turkish side. Turkish Foreign
Ministry Undersecretary Ugur Ziyal said that “the demand of the Greek
Cypriot side and Greece for inclusion of EU in Cyprus solution process
could bring in other demands, therefore Turkey and TRNC didn't accept
it”. Denktash said the proposal had taken up 11 hours of the time “for
the sake of one paragraph”. "We have bent as much as we could. If we
bend a little more, we will break,” he said. Ankara accused the Greek
Cypriots of “trying to kill the process by throwing in the EU herring”, a
senior Turkish government official said. Taken by surprise, Brussels
said it was not seeking an official role in the negotiations and would
only accept such a role if it were acceptable to all sides. “This was
never a condition for our assistance," Commission enlargement spokesman
Jean-Christophe Filori said. In the end the compromise vaguely refers to
a financial and technical role for the EU but no political
participation whatsoever, Annan made clear, suggesting a hollow victory
for the Greek Cypriot side, and indeed the Turkish Cypriot side, which
have both come away from New York agreeing to all the demands they both
opposed in the first place."
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