A great talent for going nowhere

WE HEARD countless platitudes in the last few days, inspired by the third anniversary of the referendum on the Annan plan, which gave rise to the customary festival of triumphal rhetoric and emotional posturing.

The general verdict of the pro-government camp was that we were now in a much stronger position having saved the Cyprus Republic and having joined the EU, while anyone who expressed doubts about this was an enemy of the state and a propagandist for the Turkish side.

Despite the avalanche of words, we did not hear the government or any of its cheerleaders tell us where the national problem was heading or how they would achieve the end of the division, which, supposedly, remained the long-term objective. ‘Long-term’ is the key phrase here, because nobody in the Cyprus government seems to be in a great hurry for a settlement, despite conceding, in rare moments of frankness, that time is working against us.

Most people can see through the government’s conflicting messages. An opinion poll, commissioned by UNFICYP, found that 70 per cent of Greek Cypriots did not believe there would be a settlement of the Cyprus problem in the foreseeable future. Most of the Turkish Cypriots (57 per cent) also took this view, making this the only question on which the majorities of both communities agreed.

There is complete disagreement on the most desirable type of settlement – the overwhelming majority of Greek Cypriots (72 per cent) considered a unitary state acceptable, while most Turkish Cypriots (67 per cent) rejected it; 59 per cent of Turkish Cypriots considered a two-state solution satisfactory, while 73 per cent of Greek Cypriots rejected it.

This left us with the much-maligned bi-communal, bi-zonal federation, which according to the survey, is found tolerable, a necessary evil, by the majority of both communities. But it will certainly not be the federation described, in detail, in the Annan plan, as this is no longer on the negotiating table, but, as the Government Spokesman memorably remarked, “on the autopsy table”.

This poses a serious problem as far as a settlement is concerned, because the Turkish Cypriots have been labouring under the illusion that the plan was alive and well and on the negotiating table. President Papadopoulos delayed so long in proposing the substantive changes he wanted made to it so the plan would be acceptable to the Greek Cypriots that it died.

But the government and its supporters have now found a new lollipop to suck on – the July 8 agreement, which, in a little over couple of months, will be celebrating its first anniversary. The agreement was supposedly aimed at preparing the ground for negotiations, but the two sides have yet to agree what technical committees and working groups that would have done the preparation work would discuss.

A few weeks ago, Mehmet Ali Talat announced he was considering abandoning the agreement, presumably unable to cope with 90-plus chapters Papadopoulos had submitted for discussion by the working groups.

As the Annan plan was dead, the president seized the opportunity to negotiate a settlement plan from scratch.This is never going to happen without the agreement of the Turkish Cypriot side, but the president had no problems presenting the deadlock as a diplomatic victory.

“We are setting the agenda for the Cyprus issue,” he boasted in an interview to Simerini last Sunday, adding that Nicosia now had the initiative.

But what initiative was he talking about – the initiative in making a settlement impossible and blaming the Turkish Cypriot side for it?

He has been successful in this respect, by turning the July 8 agreement into a talks-preparation procedure that would never end; and Talat would pull out of the procedure and carry the blame for not honouring his signature.

The pro-government camp may admire the president’s ingenious plan to turn the peace process into a never-ending procedural squabble and blame-game that leads nowhere. Nowhere is exactly the place Papadopoulos wants to take us and 70 per cent of the Greek Cypriots have recognised this, as the UNFICYP poll suggests.

The truth is very few of them were complaining last week as the anniversary of the referendum was marked, which could only be interpreted as a vote of confidence in the government.