Talat getting desperate...... and FT - and our Barperi friend (bu na gopsi don lemon du) - trying desperately not to offend free Cypriots this time.
Turkish Cypriot leader gloomy on UN talks
By Tony Barber in Brussels
Published: September 15 2009 13:32 | Last updated: September 15 2009 13:32
United Nations-brokered negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem are making slow progress, increasing the risk that the divided island will never be reunited as a federal state, according to the Turkish Cypriot leader.
“It’s the last chance for a solution,” Mehmet Ali Talat told the Financial Times in an interview on Tuesday. “Time is not in favour of a solution. How many attempts are we going to make, only to fail?”
Mehmet Ali Talat: "I am an optimist, but overall I am not satisfied with the pace we have reached in the talks."
US and European Union officials say that, if the 12-month-old Cyprus talks were to fall apart, it would darken Turkey’s EU membership prospects and damage efforts to construct a closer operational relationship between the EU and Nato.
Mr Talat, president of the self-proclaimed Turkish Cypriot state of northern Cyprus, did not speak of a deadline beyond which continued talks would be futile.
But he suggested that international pressure for a deal was growing, and accused France and Russia – two of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members – of being biased in favour of the Greek Cypriots.
“They are playing quite a negative role. They are not impartial. They are siding with the Greek Cypriots,” Mr Talat said. “Other countries are not in the same line. For example, Germany is more unbiased, and the British are unbiased, compared with France.”
Mr Talat and Demetris Christofias, president of the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government of Cyprus, opened the talks last September, hoping to end a dispute whose origins predate Cyprus’s independence in 1960.
He said the talks had benefited from his friendship with Mr Christofias, dating to 1995-96, and from the fact that both leaders had a reputation for being sincerely committed to a settlement.
As a result, the talks had produced concrete results on economic and judicial issues, as well as on how Cyprus’s two communities should share their EU responsibilities.
But he said there had been no progress on property disputes related to Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the island, which followed a Greek-inspired coup aimed at uniting Cyprus with Greece. The invasion led to substantial Greek Cypriot losses of property in northern Cyprus.
The property question was so divisive the two leaders had not discussed it in detail during the past 12 months, preferring to leave it until other matters had been resolved, Mr Talat said.
“When we saw that a breakthrough wasn’t possible, we skipped it. Now we’re going to take it up again, maybe in the next few weeks,” Mr Talat said.
“I am an optimist, but overall I am not satisfied with the pace we have reached in the talks. If Talat and Christofias, two pro-solution leaders, are not able to solve the problem, who is going to solve it? That is why I say this is the last chance.”
A UN-sponsored reunification plan, which would have turned Cyprus into a loose federation, was derailed in 2004 when Turkish Cypriots approved it by 65 to 35 per cent in a referendum but Greek Cypriots rejected it by 76 to 24 per cent.
The EU then admitted the Greek Cypriots as the island’s sole representatives, a step that has severely complicated Turkey’s EU accession talks.
