Cyprus-Forum.com

[Saint Jimmy]

Thanks for this interesting post.

Question: could you not get in trouble for disclosing all this? Seriously!

[JustAnAmerican]

Actually no, there is nothing classified or restricted about the information.

Now if I gave you the future arrival times, hotel room numbers, and vehicle motorcade routes, then, I would need my ass kicked.

My goal with this forum is basically to try and better explain things that at times get misrepresented.
I will be the first to say the US government does not get it right most of the time and at times you only here about the meaningful attempts at progress that go bad.

[-mikkie2-]

JustAnAmerican,

Hmm, so do you think the Annan plan was misrepresented to the Greek Cypriots? Because this is the argument the American and British governments are putting forward.

Would you agree that the 'time for reflection' should equally apply to the UN, US and UK that tried so hard to get us to say yes? Would you agree that the plan had major flaws which in the rush to get us to accept it were simply overlooked or dismissed as being unreasonable?

Would you also agree that the process was more to help Turkey than it was to help and unify Cyprus for the benefit of the Cypriot people? Why is so much emphasis placed on the wants and needs of Turkey as opposed to the wants and needs of the people of Cyprus?

I am trying to understand what American policy is regarding Cyprus because it is very confusing and contradictory. My guess is in your attempts to placate all concerned, the underlying goal is the protection of American interests in the region and if this is to the detriment of the people of Cyprus then that is the way it is.

[JustAnAmerican]

JustAnAmerican,

Hmm, so do you think the Annan plan was misrepresented to the Greek Cypriots? Because this is the argument the American and British governments are putting forward.

Would you agree that the 'time for reflection' should equally apply to the UN, US and UK that tried so hard to get us to say yes? Would you agree that the plan had major flaws which in the rush to get us to accept it were simply overlooked or dismissed as being unreasonable?

Would you also agree that the process was more to help Turkey than it was to help and unify Cyprus for the benefit of the Cypriot people? Why is so much emphasis placed on the wants and needs of Turkey as opposed to the wants and needs of the people of Cyprus?

I am trying to understand what American policy is regarding Cyprus because it is very confusing and contradictory. My guess is in your attempts to placate all concerned, the underlying goal is the protection of American interests in the region and if this is to the detriment of the people of Cyprus then that is the way it is.

Misrepresentation could be a very harsh word. We have had and do have sources within the GoC and within other diplomatic communities report on what was said and felt by the GoC leadership. Basically, the executive leadership did not want the plan, but would look ridiculous rejecting it publicly. So they tried to use other methods. This is a very natural occurrence in the diplomatic world. The deal you are getting is sometimes not what you really wanted. We along with other interested parties “sniffed out” the method of communicating and understood their dislike of the plan. What was said and what they did to undermine the plan is not discussed publicly.

The time of reflection, that is relative. Some GC friends of mine have no property in the north and voted yes, some have property in the north and voted no. I even have some who fled, were relocated to the south, but still hate the TCs with a passion. The GoC negotiated the deal without listening closely to the GC interest groups and thinking about the results. The Time of Reflection is a GoC request. They know if the vote comes too soon, it will be rejected again and this time island division will be permanent. Flights will begin, properties will be sold and GoC Cyp pound will weaken.

Was the process to help unify or help the TC in the north? You tell me, who will benefit more with unification, my next-door GC neighbor in Strovalos with his Audi A-3 and BMW Si or the family of 8 TCs (not settlers) hitch hiking on a 36-degree day because they have no transportation public or private in the north? Economically, only the TCs benefit from unification. How would your family benefit?

Let me just clear something up. If the US government were completely thrown out of Cyprus tomorrow, it would not matter a whole lot. Most likely it would not even make the US news. If we have any interest here, like a base of operations for Middle-Eastern concerns we would utilize the UK resources on the island. We do this without the blessing of the GoC.

Our role today has developed out of the failure of UK to US diplomacy here in the 1960s through 1974. We underestimated both the RoG and the RoT. The US concerns at that time were Anti-Communism and Vietnam. We brushed off the coup attempt as a minor problem. The US could not even afford a coordinated effort.

[Main_Source]

who's the 'GoC'?

[JustAnAmerican]

Goverment of Cyprus

[Kifeas]

Was the process to help unify or help the TC in the north? You tell me, who will benefit more with unification, my next-door GC neighbor in Strovalos with his Audi A-3 and BMW Si or the family of 8 TCs (not settlers) hitch hiking on a 36-degree day because they have no transportation public or private in the north? Economically, only the TCs benefit from unification. How would your family benefit?

Are you just saying that the 200,000 GCs who are kept away from their properties in the occupied north, which value more than 60 USD billions in total, and instead the majority of them live in refuge settlements and ex-TC houses all over Cyprus, but almost all of them remain property- less up to this day, should not have had an economic benefit from a solution? Yet the majority of them voted down the plan with the same percentages as the rest of GCs who are not refugees and who do not have properties in the north. Even those originating from areas, which were meant to be returned to the GC side after territorial adjustments, have voted down the plan in almost the same patent (64% No.)

Why in your opinion? Were they fools and thus they were mislead? Am I a fool my self, being a refugee that voted down the plan?

Admit it my friend! You (US /UK) wanted to help Turkey to get a positive image due to its E.U. ambition road and thus you pushed Annan to make the best possible deal for Turkey and the TCs to accept, knowing that you were committing an injustice against the GCs. If the plan had gone through on both sides, fair enough for you! Turkey would have been the good boy, and the Cyprus issue would have simultaneously been closed (wrapped up in a quick and synoptic manner, I should say.) If not, this would have been due to a GC rejection and therefore Turkey would have been made to look the “good boy” in the eyes of the E.U. and the International public opinion.

As simple as that!

[JustAnAmerican]

Well Kifeas,
It does not really work like that. The US does not have people sitting on either side of the negotiating table telling the Turks or GC what to say or what to ask for. If we had an agenda, we don’t hand it to either side and say, “Here this is what we want, go get it.”
The US does not give a damn whether there is unification or not. We don’t own any ridiculously overpriced property in the North.
The new negotiating points are going to be very hard for the TCs to swallow. The GoC have asked not only for better property allowances, but also relocation and transportation fees from your current point to your old property. We doubt the TRNC will pay for the cost of relocating you back to the old property, but who knows.

[Kifeas]

Well Kifeas,
It does not really work like that. The US does not have people sitting on either side of the negotiating table telling the Turks or GC what to say or what to ask for. If we had an agenda, we don’t hand it to either side and say, “Here this is what we want, go get it.”
The US does not give a damn whether there is unification or not. We don’t own any ridiculously overpriced property in the North.
The new negotiating points are going to be very hard for the TCs to swallow. The GoC have asked not only for better property allowances, but also relocation and transportation fees from your current point to your old property. We doubt the TRNC will pay for the cost of relocating you back to the old property, but who knows.

Mr. American,

You say you do not have an Agenda. Smoothening the E.U. accession road of Turkey, is not in the US /UK agenda? Could Turkey have ever been considered an E.U. candidate country, if it had kept the negative and intransigent outlook that it obtained during the last 30 years, since the 1974 invasion? Of course not! Therefore something should have been done towards this direction, in order to change this outlook of Turkey. You do not seat an either side of the negotiating table, but you are the paymasters of the U.N. and Kofi Annan. I know the U.S. doesn’t give a damn whether there is unification and justice in Cyprus, because Cyprus doesn’t have oil like Kuwait and Iraq does. Double standards as always!

Furthermore, Turkey doesn’t want a solution that will not serve their strategic (military) interests in Cyprus. Ecevit, the Turkish generals and the deep-state bureaucrats have always been saying that the Cyprus problem was solved in 1974. Turkey is, or at least you thought it was up until the Iraq war, your regional cop. Your best agent in the area! That is why you kept (keep) stuffing her with weapons and money from practically every hole. Is that a lie? Why should you push Turkey to accept things that she doesn’t like, visa vie Cyprus? Why shouldn’t you make her a favour and push Annan and De Sotto to strike the best deal for Turkey?

Ridiculously overpriced GC properties in the north? Ridicules are your comment my friend!
What do you know about properties? Why you do not speak about the value of properties in the U.S.? They are priced 3 or 4 times more on the average than our properties in the north. Are they not ridiculously overpriced? Why overpriced? How much should a donum of land (1338 sq. meters,) on the coast of Kyrenia, Lapithos or Famagusta should be? Is the Cy£ 90,000 that I estimate it to be, a ridiculous price? Anywhere in the south it costs twice as much. In the north it will reach the south prices, 24 hours after the solution. Yet, I do not even take the value in the south into consideration, when I estimated the total value of the GC properties in the north to be around USD 60 billions.

Read again what you said and tell me who is making ridicules comments?
“The GoC have asked not only for better property allowances, but also relocation and transportation fees from your current point to your old property.” Do you expect us to take you seriously when you write things like that?

[JustAnAmerican]

Kifeas,
I am a little confused about what points you are trying to make in your first three paragraphs.

A. I understand that you think the property value will be equal or better after a solution.

If the property values go up after a solution, that is great. Now when will there be a solution? 2006 or 2060.

B. We have no interest in Cyprus because there is no oil.

There is oil off the coast of Cyprus. Egyptian oil companies and Cyprus are mining the fields together. They announced the discovery of a few fields in Cyprus territorial waters last week. There is no oil in Africa or Latin America (other than Venezuela) and we spend a lot of money and have a lot of interest in those places. The oil to US interest correlation is a theory that is used when the public is unaware why the US is involved somewhere. Prices of oil have gone UP in the US since we went into Iraq, so much for that motive. Not very profitable for Americans.


C. We finance the UN and therefore we control them.

If we finance the UN then why can’t we fire those executives caught in the oil for food scandal? It should be pretty easy since we are the UN paymasters?

Kifeas,
It just does not work like that brother. I guess it would be great if the US government were as simple and coordinated as people think. There are very different elements of the American government from known agencies to private interest groups. Nobody is coordinating one specific plan. The Department of Defense has their needs and concerns the Department of State has theirs, don’t’ forget about the unnamed people like DEA, and the FBI.

They all don’t meet together each day and ask, “Hey how can we fuck with the Cyprus Problem today.”

D. Wait a few weeks until the negotiating points that the GoC brought to the new round of talks is made public. Re-settlement fees have been asked for to include the transportation and moving expenses of a refuge back into their old property.

Wait a month and we will see.