Cyprus-Forum.com

[Swashbuckler]

The Annan Plan may be dead but any further negotiations will have to start from there. It was after all the culmination of decades of UN involvement in the Cy Prob, including exhaustive surveys, consultation and investigations. Too, the plan accepted and endorsed by Security Council resolution 1475 (unanimous support for the Annan plan) and Decision of the European Council (12.12.2003).

That TCs accepted it on the promise of direct trade with the EU, after the EU had categorically stated that Turkey had done all it could to facilitate a settlement) places the ball firmly in the EU court.

[Mickleham]

The Annan Plan may be dead but any further negotiations will have to start from there. It was after all the culmination of decades of UN involvement in the Cy Prob, including exhaustive surveys, consultation and investigations. Too, the plan accepted and endorsed by Security Council resolution 1475 (unanimous support for the Annan plan) and Decision of the European Council (12.12.2003).

That TCs accepted it on the promise of direct trade with the EU, after the EU had categorically stated that Turkey had done all it could to facilitate a settlement) places the ball firmly in the EU court.

All was subject of the referendum

The plan is dead.

EU will NOT reward aggressors, invaders, dishonest governments, illegal occupiers, that do not keep there obligations and responsibilities seriously.

Is Turkey's Government correct and 25 European countrys wrong?

For Allah's sake come to your senses.

[Issy1956]

Mickleh As far as what the EU will or will not do it certainly rewarded the dishonest GC administration with EU membership-dont you remember waht was said at the time by EU officials.
Again another example of one rule for you and another for us.
Any new agreement will use the AP as a starting point. Therefore if the AP plan is dead then so is a united Cyprus.

[alexISS]

If Turkey had entered the EU before Cyprus, what do you think the situation would be now? Would Turkey not veto Cyprus's entry, as she does right now in NATO? Would Turkey work for a solution to the problem or claim it was solved in 74? Accepting Cyprus before Turkey and before solving the Cyprus problem was the best thing the EU could do to drive the issue to a fair and permanent solution, because that was the only way Turkey would get herself involved

[Issy1956]

Alex,
Everybody wants a fair and permanent settlement. In fact a lot of people thought the AP was just that. However it was not promoted by the GC admin to their people and they shot it down, in fact they made sure that no body else from outside could present its merits to the GC people either. God you guys have such short memories. The EU, Turkey and not doubt Greece all thought that the GC's were negiotaing in good faith. When they proved that they were not some people in the EU were less than happy. The entry of a divided Cyprus was not supposed to happen and would not have happened withoutthe deceit of the GC admin. Its as simple as that.
The question is now where do we go from here and if the answer to that is that we have to start all over again from first principles then we will undoubtly end up with cementing a permanent division which as a Cypriot I would deplore but given the entrenched attitudes I see no alternative.

[Alexis]

Alex,
Everybody wants a fair and permanent settlement. In fact a lot of people thought the AP was just that. However it was not promoted by the GC admin to their people and they shot it down, in fact they made sure that no body else from outside could present its merits to the GC people either. God you guys have such short memories. The EU, Turkey and not doubt Greece all thought that the GC's were negiotaing in good faith. When they proved that they were not some people in the EU were less than happy. The entry of a divided Cyprus was not supposed to happen and would not have happened withoutthe deceit of the GC admin. Its as simple as that.
The question is now where do we go from here and if the answer to that is that we have to start all over again from first principles then we will undoubtly end up with cementing a permanent division which as a Cypriot I would deplore but given the entrenched attitudes I see no alternative.

I'm sorry but I don't agree here. There is not one shred of evidence that the RoC cheated their way into the EU. Sure the Annan Plan was shot down by the admin and its good points were not highlighted enough by the media in the south, for many reasons but to claim that this has anything to do with EU entry is quite frankly ridiculous. Yes, the plan had many clauses in it relating to EU entry and that of Turkey's (which in my view was irrelevant to the Cyprus Problem and should not have been in a comprehensive settlement) but it had been established that Cyprus would enter the EU way before any of this. In fact it is Cyprus' impending entry to the EU that was thought would serve as a catalyst for a solution and it did at least have the result of getting Turkey around the negotiating table. If acceptance of the Annan Plan or negotiation of that plan in 'good faith' had been a pre-requisite for EU entry the EU would have made it so. If anything it was Turkey and the TRNC's intransigence all those years that drove the EU to accept Cyprus' entry to the EU whilst partitioned. It was hoped that the entry would serve as a catalyst for solving the Cyprus Problem, that's why everyone was dissapointed when Annan Plan was rejected. We can argue a lot about the Annan Plan, but the truth is in any negotiation the objective has to be win-win and whilst you can singularly blame the GC administration for the 'failure' of the plan we are not privy to what negotiations took place.

[Kikapu]

Let me repeat myself one more time. Cyprus was accepted into the EU, so that EU can keep Turkey out, by using Cyprus as a "Trojan Horse". This way, EU will not get it's hands dirty, because Cyprus will do it for them, at the expense of a "Unified Cyprus" and the 200,000 Greek refugees. Sooner the ROC can recognize this, that they are being used by the EU, the sooner a settlement can be reached, and if not, ROC will win the "BATTLE" to keep Turkey out, but will lose the "WAR", as well as Northern Cyprus.

[Viewpoint]

Didnt someone from the EU call the GC adminsitration "back stabbers" after the result of the referendum?

[Alexis]

Didnt someone from the EU call the GC adminsitration "back stabbers" after the result of the referendum?

Hi vp,
I don't recall this specific comment, wlthough I do remember a lot of people were dissappointed. I do not doubt that Papadopoulos' handling of the situation was far from good, but that was not my point. To suggest that the RoC cheated it's way into the EU is just plain unfair. The RoC would have gotten into the EU anyway whatever happened (and did). Cyprus' entry was secured in the mid-nineties way before Annan in the form we knew it was conceived. It was always hoped that the entry would be a catalyst for unification and I too am disappointed that did not happen but as we saw the whole Annan initiative was rushed to get to referendum in time for accession, this did not happen the other way around, otherwise why not simply at some stage delay Cyprus' accession by 1 year so things would not be rushed? The answer is also simply, unification was never a pre-requisite for entry and so accession was always going to happen in April 2004, the Annan initiative was planned around this timeframe, NOT the other way round. To claim otherwise is simply to try and make the GC community feel guilty for simply voting no at a referendum. Believe me I also was dissapointed by the handling of Annan Plan (by all parties including the RoC). It has resulted in dividing our two communities even further and I am beginning to believe Kikapu's conspiracy theory that this whole fiasco was planned from the start to prevent Turkey from entering the EU.

[observer]

Mickleham wote:

Is Turkey's Government correct and 25 European countrys wrong?

As I recall it, the bulk of the other EU countries were in favour of the Annan Plan, as were the UN. Is the GC goverment, who strongly advised their electorate to vote against the Plan correct and the rest of the world wrong.

Like it or not, any future agreement will not vary greatly from a Plan which most of the world found a reasonable compromise.