Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

There is also another factor in the territorial settlement that is so obviously being calculated by Turkey that I will not mention it in the open Forum. To do so would be helping Turkey, not the TCs and there is no need to do that.

[Paphitis]

Paphiti,

We have never in the past laid down a series of options, on a sliding scale of territory proportions that we would be prepared to accept, like for instance 29-71 for federation, 25-75 for confederation and 18-82 for outright partition.

We have been so bound up in our own rhetoric and bullshit that we do not even discuss the probability of the British bases reverting to the GC constituent state and settling that question now, as part of the negotiation. If the British leave after the agreement wait and see us fighting it out all over again to share in this "new" territory and apportioning it by some formula which might even go on a 50-50 basis, even though the vast majority of villages and residents in the bases are GCs. (Ormithia, Xylofagou, Xylotympou, Livadia etc).

We must admit that we chose the worst possible people to lead these negotiations. People who know nothing about power or bargaining.

Our idiot negotiators did not even raise the point that while one constituent state under the Annan plan would be exclusively Turkish, the other would house all the remaining communities of Cyprus- the Armenians, Maronites, Latins and Roma. No one thought it worth mentioning it as a valid point in the territorial question.

Etsi kelle etsi xiourafi theli.

Fully agree Nikitas.

Sadly....

[repulsewarrior]

...Bizonal has no definition as of yet. Assuming that it means tearing the island in two is just nonsense.

...similarly, Bicommunal has been defined, and yet progress is stalled because we discuss an agreement where there will be two governing bodies, rather than three (at two levels) which is what is called for.

if we wish free mobility and association then it is imperative for us to consider that as Cypriots, a body as a whole, there are distinctions which are worth sustaining. Thus, as members of a larger family, rather than "Greeks" and "Turks", the matter is one of defining the Rights of Individuals, and as well, the Rights of Persons.

regarding the property issue, our task is the same. it is not enough to consider Cypriots as exclusively Individuals. in both cases of displacement in our short history, people were victimised as Persons; to date this subtle difference has been dismissed.

...and quite frankly, it is an issue of Statesmanship, our leaders do not have the courage to present new thinking, sticking to a script designed before and during the Cold War.