By Nicos A. Pittas
LET THERE be no mistake about it: next February’s presidential election in its own way will be as much of a referendum on the future of Cyprus as the one in 2004.
The strategy of the current president is to ride to victory again on the strength of the popular will against the UN plan that was soundly rejected four years ago. That he is setting up a straw man is totally irrelevant’ he will do whatever is necessary to bamboozle the public to secure his re-election by playing on their fears and misunderstanding of political realities.
To effectively counter the president’s Machiavellian strategy, his main opponents Christofias and Kasoulides have to convince the people that either is a better choice to negotiate a Cyprus settlement based on the [color=red[/color]]real issue[/color]s. They are up against the smoke and mirrors that the magus of Strakka will use to secure another five years for himself and his dynasty in the making, even at the cost of the permanent division of the country. What, then, are the real issues?
In the realm of diplomacy, one can be certain that in the EU there is a near universal perception that allowing Cyprus to join before a settlement was a mistake. In the larger scheme of things, from a strategic perspective the EU’s relations with Turkey are infinitely more important than its relations with Cyprus.
The EU is now stuck with Cyprus and would dearly like to see the problem fixed by 2009 when the review period for Turkey’s compliance with the Ankara Protocol will expire. If for no other reason than this, the EU and the permanent members of the Security Council will likely push for another UN effort to bring about a comprehensive settlement before the end of 2009.
Although much will depend on Ankara’s attitude and willingness to give a green light for a renewed effort, should the international diplomatic machine gear up for one more push to bring about a settlement, Nicosia will have no choice but to get back to the table, with or without progress on the so-called Gambari process.
On the regional front, Greece and Turkey are determined not to allow Cyprus to interfere with their efforts to improve bilateral relations. They can both live with the impasse on the island, but neither will allow their ethnic community locally to endanger their larger interests in the region that are served by improving relations and stability.
Both sides will continue to serve large doses of nationalist rhetoric when important visitors come to the island, but don’t bet the farm that our ethnic neighbours will be there to pull our chestnuts out of the fire if we let things get out of control again.
Good relations between Greece and Turkey always helps create a context in favour of a settlement but does not guarantee it where “Athens supports, but Nicosia decides” on matters relating to the diplomatic handling of the Cyprus problem.
Whatever framework for a settlement is put on the table by the UN, it will look and smell and feel a hell of a lot like the string of rejected UN proposals put forward since the High Level Agreements of 1977 and 1979.
It doesn’t matter who our negotiator will be, the framework will cover the same old parameters on the same old issues: constitution, territory, property and security along lines very similar to the iterations of the Annan plan, the Ghali set of ideas and so on.
On the constitutional aspect, for example, the choice will not be between a federal and a unitary state structure. It will be about the powers that will devolve to the constituent states and those vested in the federal government, which in turn will have entrenched protections for the Turkish Cypriot community to ensure the political equality of the two main communities.
Let there be no mistake about it: the negotiation will not be about whether the Turkish Cypriot constituent state will have sovereign powers, but only about how the sovereign powers of the state will be distributed between the two levels of government, federal and constituent.
On the territorial aspect, everybody knows that the percentage of land under the administration of the two constituent states will be virtually the same as on the maps that formed part of the Annan plan. We might quibble about a percentage of land here or a percentage there, but at the end of the day the difference will not make any real difference. We will be lucky if we can get both Morphou and Famagusta back.
Anyone thinking that Turkey will agree to a settlement that does not secure what it perceives is its security interests and that of the Turkish Cypriot community is dreaming in Technicolor.
Perhaps the area that has the greatest scope for negotiation is property rights, but even in this realm the building activity that has taken place in the north since the rejection of the Annan plan has complicated the matter.
In any negotiation there has to be some give and take, but on the Cyprus problem the basic parameters were set a long time ago and the give and take will be around the margins not the core of the compromise.
You can slice the salami only in so many ways and those who believe that somehow the Gambari process strikes a path to a new “basis” for settling the Cyprus problem are simply continuing the deception of the public and once again raising expectations that cannot be fulfilled.
The choice for Cyprus is not between a federal, bi-zonal and bi-communal transformation of the 1960 constitution and some other kind of unitary constitution. It is between a federation as contemplated in the High Level Agreements of 1979 and 1977 and some form of partition, with or without a con federal structure.
Is it not clear why Tassos Papadopoulos invited the Secretary-general to re-open negotiations based on the Annan plan after he became president? Is it not clear why he accepted tight timelines and binding arbitration by the Secretary-general? :wink:
He had no choice; the UN proposal for a settlement was clearly within the agreed upon framework and had he rejected it he would have scuttled the UN initiative with all that such action would have entailed, including putting our EU membership at risk. The EU expected a settlement before Cyprus became a member and Papadopoulos could not afford to give the impression that he was not committed to a settlement on the lines agreed to previously.
Of course, his ace in the hole – or so he thought – was the historic intransigence of Rauf Denktash and his hard line backers in Ankara. The strategy came unstuck, however, when the new Erdogan government gave its approval to the UN plan and manoeuvred Denkatsh out of the leadership in the occupied north**. It was then and only then that Papadopoulos fell back on the people to reject a solution that he had never believed in. from the start.
Does anyone seriously think that if Ankara signals its willingness to return to the table the basis for negotiation will fundamentally differ from the one rejected in 2004?
The elections simply afford us an opportunity to change our negotiator. The real question is who we want at the table next time: the guy who blew it the last time, and who in the eyes of the international community is not to be trusted, or one of his two principal opponents.
At the end of the day, our best hope for getting a settlement that is a bit more palatable than the previous one is the body of EU law with which any settlement agreement between the parties will have to adhere. Beyond that geopolitical and regional realities as always will dictate the outcome. Either we accept a settlement in line with reality or we continue our sleepwalk to partition
We can go with the man who would have rejected the London Agreement on which the independence of Cyprus was based; the man who sat at the decision table when the 1960 Constitution was scrambled in 1963 leading to the enclaving of the Turkish Cypriots; the man who has to share some of the blame for the decisions that led to the bloody fiascos at Tylliria in 1964 and Kophinou in 1967, the man who backed Makarios in all the gambles that led to the tragic events of 1974; the man who has rejected every offer put on the table in the past 30 years; the man whose cover was blown in 2004 after he had pretended his willingness to negotiate a settlement based on the Plan that he now never tires of painting in the darkest colors as the direst threat to our independence. Or we can pass the baton to one of his two principal opponents who for all their warts, do not come with the same baggage and the visceral distrust of the other side and the international community.
It’s very simple. Either we are willing to reconcile and live united in a federal partnership state with our Turkish Cypriot brothers and sisters, who will be masters in their own constituent state (as we will be in ours), and in which at the federal level they will enjoy certain communal rights and privileges beyond what their numbers would suggest is reasonable, or we go our separate ways and hope against hope that the two resulting states will be able to live in peaceful coexistence.
Let us not lose sight that the starkness of our choice has less to do with the strength of Turkey in the region and more to do with the political myopia that has characterised Greek Cypriot policy on inter-communal issues for more than 50 years. A policy with which the name Tassos Papadopoulos is indelibly associated. Whenever we feel hard done by we should tirelessly remind ourselves that we are reaping politically what we have sown.
Of one thing we can bank on: after the next time there won’t be a next time.
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