Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades has said that he took a courageous decision to return to the negotiating table to avert a deadlock in the UN-led peace talks.
“The decision to resume the UN-led peace talks from the point we left off at Mont Pelerin was not a cowardly decision but a bold decision,” President Anastasiades said, speaking at a dinner on Monday evening in Nicosia in honor of President of the European Economic and Social Committee, George Dassis.
He noted that the “choice was between stagnation and further deadlocks or continuing the talks, having always as a prerequisite the basic principles, so through a constructive dialogue and with the hope that Ankara`s positive rhetoric will turn into a practical expression of interest and support of the talks, to finally reach a result that will create the prospects and conditions for a lasting and viable solution as well as a functional state”.
He pledged to work hard in the coming weeks so that the settlement will meet the expectations and address the concerns of both communities in Cyprus.
The President assured that he will not present before the people a solution plan that will not meet the expectation of the Greek Cypriots, bearing in mind their concerns as a result of the continuing Turkish occupation.
He expressed his determination to work hard for a solution of the Cyprus problem, saying that this ambitious objective is feasible. A precondition for the success, he added, is that Turkey takes concrete steps that will make the negotiating process productive.
The solution, President Anastasiades said, must liberate Cyprus from the occupation armies, the anachronistic system of guarantees of third countries and turn Cyprus into an international model of peaceful coexistence.
Meanwhile, speaking earlier on at an event organized by the ruling right wing Democratic Rally Party to honor Stelios Ioannou, the President said that so far the Greek Cypriot side has secured many and important things at the negotiating table and in order to safeguard them, a deadlock in the talks had to be averted.
The President said that “in recent days there was a dilemma after the Mont Pelerin crisis, either to be led into a deadlock with unpredictable faits accomplis or resume the dialogue without watering down the positions we maintain and bearing in mind the worries and concerns of the Greek Cypriots.”
He underlined that he chose to resume the talks, `instead of watching tactics and politics unfolding – especially given the rhetoric of the Turkish President in recent months and particularly in the past several days – instead of seeing another 26,500 persons being `nationalized` as citizens of the illegal Turkish Cypriot regime and instead of a possible integration of the Turkish Cypriots” with Turkey, a danger experienced in other parts of the world.
“You enter the dialogue, knowing what to defend and what to claim. We have achieved a lot so far as a result of the EU acquis communautaire, we have safeguarded the freedom of movement, establishment, acquisition of property and exercise of profession,” he said, pointing out that “we have also secured population ratio so as there is no risk for Hellenism in the future.”
The President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci decided last week to immediately re-engage in their negotiations and instructed their negotiators to continue meeting in order to achieve further progress on all outstanding issues interdependently, while they (Anastasiades and Akinci) will also meet as required.
Furthermore they decided that they will meet in Geneva on the 9th of January 2017, on the 11th of January they will present their respective maps and that from the 12th of January, a Conference on Cyprus will be convened with the added participation of the guarantor powers, while other relevant parties shall be invited as needed.
The two leaders held in November two rounds of talks in Mont-Pelerin, Switzerland, focusing on the territory aspect of the Cyprus problem. The UN announced after the end of their talks that despite their best efforts, they were not able to achieve the necessary further convergences on criteria for territorial adjustment that would have paved the way for the last phase of the talks.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Anastasiades and Akinci have been engaged in UN-led talks since May last year, with a view to reunite the island under a federal roof.