Interesting article in the Cyprus Mail.
Does anyone know what the July 8 agreement is??
Christofias must recognise the suffocating urgency
By Loucas Charalambous
I SINCERELY hope I am proved wrong, but I am beginning to fear that President Demetris Christofias is following in the footsteps of his predecessor. I was terrified when I heard his comments after his meetings in Athens with President Papoulias and Prime Minister Karamanlis that the only thing he could see ahead was the July 8 agreement and that he would never agree to “suffocating time-frames”.
Tassos Papadopoulos managed to fritter away five years in the Presidential Palace by basing his policy on the single sentence – “For a the right solution, there must be the correct preparation which would lead to new negotiations, without arbitration and suffocating time-frames.” For the four years after the referendum, we were hearing him say this morning, noon and night. And at the end of the four years, the preparation hadn’t even begun.
A president who recognises the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in, a president who can see the prospect of partition staring us in the face, cannot insist on the farce of July 8 and bang on that he does not accept time-frames. And it is truly paradoxical that the Turkish side is more in a hurry than we are. It is our president who should have been seeking the setting of time-frames and not Mehmet Ali Talat.
Today, everyone agrees and embraces the view that time is working against the Greek Cypriot side. This was the danger Glafcos Clerides has been warning us about since 1974 and on which he based his entire political philosophy regarding the Cyprus issue. As he said ad nauseam, “The fruitless passing of time would cement the faits accomplis of the invasion and make the finding of a solution more difficult.”
Apart from the time factor, there is another defining factor that makes it imperative that we show the greatest possible urgency. It seems that Christofias is either not clued up or has chosen to behave like Papadopoulos. In the first half of 2010, at the latest, there will be elections in the north. I say at the latest because the opposition has been persistently demanding that elections be brought forward, something that Talat and his party have been reluctant to do so far.
The only time available for productive talks is up to the summer of 2009, after which the Turkish Cypriots will be involved in their election campaigns. It should also be taken into account that Talat and his party are in a much weaker position now than they were three years ago and that this weakening could continue. Anyone following political events north of the Green Line would know that it is distinctly possible for Talat and CTP to lose the next elections.
We therefore have, at best, a period of 15 months to reach a settlement. If we fail to do so in this time, we can forget the negotiated settlement. Under the circumstance, for Christofias to insist on the July 8 agreement that will not bring us any closer to a settlement, even after 30 years, indicates either a dangerous ignorance of the hard facts or indifference for developments that are around the corner.
Even among moderate Turkish Cypriots, the view gaining ground is that if a new initiative fails to produce a result, then they should hold a referendum about their future. I do not know whether our illustrious leader has given much thought to where things would lead after a new failure in the peace process. We have all seen the Kosovo case and I have no doubt that even our closest friends – if we still have any after Papadopoulos’ five years in power – would be satisfied with a similar formula being applied to Cyprus.
This is why Christofias should put aside the slogans and word-play about “suffocating time-frames” and arbitration, used by Papadopoulos, a |
