NICOSIA, 16 February 2004 — Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said yesterday an agreement to reunite Cyprus was possible but the timetable was tight.
His words were echoed by Greek leaders who said an agreement to resume UN negotiations this Thursday in Nicosia on the decades-old conflict was just the start of solving the issue in time for a united island to join the European Union on May 1.
The site of the negotiations will be a 1948 terminal building of what was once Nicosia International Airport, an area straddling the no-man’s land separating the Mediterranean island’s ethnic Greek and Turkish communities.
Abandoned during the 1974 fighting that led to Cyprus’s partition, it is now a base for the UN which keeps a 1,200-strong peacekeeping force on the island.
“The timetable for negotiations is tight but we can get a result,” Denktash told reporters on his return from New York where the deal to resume talks was hammered out.
Under the deal, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots would negotiate until March 22, when the mother countries Turkey and Greece would join talks for another week.
If there were still outstanding issues, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would fill in the gaps so a final text could be put to a referendum by both sides on April 21.
“We (Turkish Cypriots) have two safety valves -- the referendum and the fact that the Turkish Parliament must also give its assent,” Denktash said. “If the people do not like this agreement they have the right to say so.”
“We tried to get rid of the Annan plan but we couldn’t. The whole world stood before us. But this time round there is a difference — we will present to the referendum an improved agreement,” Denktash said.
The leader of Greece’s governing socialist party George Papandreou, who as foreign minister played a key role in the New York agreement, said the days ahead were “critical.”
Papandreou has since stepped down from the foreign minister post to lead his socialist PASOK party in its campaign for a March 7 general election.
“The decisions in New York were not the end of this issue. They were just the beginning,” Papandreou said in an interview with Sunday’s Ethnos newspaper.
UN diplomats are already assembling to guide the complex reunification plan with talks led by UN envoy Alvaro de Soto who has guided past peace efforts.
It is likely the leaders will meet three times a week and teams dealing with the nitty-gritty of negotiations daily.
Negotiations are held in English and the media are likely to be allowed access only to the opening salvo of negotiations.
Key issues will be the size of refugee and land exchanges as well as how many troops from Greece and Turkey will remain.
A Cyprus deal would be based on a largely decentralized, bi-zonal federation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
The far wealthier Greek Cypriots, who make up 80 percent of the island’s population of less than one million and control about 60 percent of its territory will join the EU whatever the outcome.
