Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

The territory issue has several aspects which apparently the GC side is not facing, or if it is it is not making their views public.

The Karpasia issue is one of these. The inclusion of Karpasia in the GC sector would break the GC sector into THREE fragments. The British Dhekelia base already cuts the GC area in two. Karpasia would add a third isolated piece of land.

It is arguable that each side should have solid chunks of contiguous territory.

I would add that the GC side must insist that Dhekelia is surrounded on ALL sides by GC territory, precisely inorder to avoid fragmentation of its territory into more than one piece.

It should also be a priority to define that each side gets a percentage of the ISLAND not the territory of the republic, the two are not identical, and that the British bases lie on GC land and in the event of their leaving the territory reverts to the GC side.

A clause should also be inserted limiting other possioble future claims of one side on the other, in case some resource discovery leads to conflict as we have recently seen over the possible oil reserves in the south.

So far I have not seen any such proposals, which tends to show that the GC side is not paying due attention to the territory issue.