Under the above title, Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (17.06.14) reports on statements by the Turkish Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu who met yesterday with a delegation of the “Independent Turkish Commission” headed by the former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari.
Speaking during the meeting, Eroglu referred to the Cyprus negotiation talks and said that they have almost agreed on the Economy Chapter, adding that they approached the property issue and that the Turkish Cypriot side had already submitted proposals on the territory issue.
Explaining that even though they agreed for the guarantees issue to be discussed during the meeting that the three guarantor powers would attend to, due to the changes of the “Greek Cypriot administration”, as Eroglu described the Republic of Cyprus, they reverted to some issues.
Eroglu expressed then the belief that there would be a progress on some issues during the next meetings of the leaders that will take place on June 23 and July 7.
On the Cyprus problem, Eroglu said that the non-solution of the Cyprus problem is the main problem in the “country”, adding that the negotiations are carried out for the solution of the Cyprus problem.
Explaining that the main target is to reach a positive outcome from the negotiations that will lead to a referendum, Eroglu, however, said that the process is moving slowly and added that until so far, the sides have submitted to the table their views as regards the main chapters.
Eroglu explained that a progress was achieved at the chapter “Governance and Power Sharing” during the previous negotiation talks with Christofias, however, he added, that since Anastasiades has come with new positions, they have started to discuss these issues from the beginning.
On his part, Ahtisaari provided information about the commission and its activities and said that the commission aims to contribute more to Turkey’s EU negotiation talks.
Ahtisaari also said that the commission had carried out a research in 2004 on the possible opportunities to be created with Turkey joining the EU.
Explaining that the conclusion of the report had stated that Turkey’s accession talks should have started immediately once Ankara fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria, he said that in 2009 a second report titled “Turkey in Europe: Breaking the vicious circle” was also published.