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Comment - Just who are we trying to kid?
By Nicos A. Pittas


HOW sad. More than 30 years since the Turkish invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus, and the best that our leadership can do is play cat and mouse with the international community.

It’s almost as if now that Turkey has an incentive to solve the Cyprus problem, we want to have our turn to play for time and to dictate the terms of settlement.

This sort of tit¬-for-tat would be amusing if not for the fact that the only people that suffer as a result are the Cypriots on both sides of the Green Line.

I can understand our President’s reluctance to go back to the table for he must surely know that his track record guarantees that he will be the one to feel the heat from the international community to settle on terms not far different from those he rejected last April. Yet surely he must understand that the world’s patience with his prevarication is not unlimited. And what about the ordinary Cypriots: how long must we wait before he tells us what kind of a solution he really wants?

Now he tells us he is ready to go back to the table as soon as there is an agreed procedural framework.

Who is he trying to kid? Does he really think the Secretary-general is keen to invite the parties back for open-ended discussions, without timetables or a specific context for the matters to be negotiated? Does he think the world has an appetite for another four years of a dialogue of the deaf that goes nowhere?

The only way we are going to get back to the table is if we specify what aspects of the Annan plan require changes in our view to make it more viable and functional, and to indicate what in our judgment would constitute appropriate amendments to the plan. This is neither naive nor does it undermine our negotiating position. We have rejected one plan that the rest of the world considers fair and balanced. It is therefore incumbent on us to state what would make the plan palatable to us.

No one expects us to disclose in advance the limits of our tolerance to compromise on any given aspect of the plan. On the other hand, the other side and the international community need to know whether there is any point to resuming a negotiating process after so many past failures.

If we sincerely desire a solution that is federal, bi-zonal and bi-communal, then we, as the party that rejected a plan put forward under an arbitration process that we agreed to last February in New York, must now show the world what we understand by such a solution. If we do not, and if we are not prepared to negotiate on the basis of the UN plan we rejected in the referendum, then let’s say so clearly and waste no more time in futile efforts to revive a plan that is dead and gone.

What we must understand, however, is that if we reject the Annan plan as a basis for further negotiations, we are not likely to see another process for a negotiated solution during the political life of this President.

Life will go on. We can continue railing against Turkey and the world for perpetuating the tragic and pointless division of the island, but we will really have no one to blame but ourselves