AKEL GS: The President must take initiatives for a resumption of negotiations
14th May 2021, DIALOGOS portal
The President of the Republic must take initiatives for a resumption of negotiations and proceed to moves that won’t go deviate from the principles of the solution of the Cyprus problem and will give an incentive to the Turkish Cypriot community and Turkey to return to the agreed framework of the solution, his General Secretary of AKEL A.Kyprianou said today.
In statements after his visit to the Famagusta General Hospital, A. Kyprianou said that “the President of the Republic’s initiative to brief the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UN Secretariat, the Secretary General of the Organization and others about the latest developments surrounding the Cyprus problem is a move in the right direction”. The General Secretary of AKEL noted that “We don’t know the content of the letter sent by the President of the Republic.”
A.Kyprianou added that AKEL had been warning for 4 years “that we would reach this point if we didn’t take initiatives and if we do not take initiatives to create the preconditions to solve the Cyprus problem. The only thing the perpetuation of this deadlock will succeed in doing is to bring us closer and closer to partition. That is our great concern.” He added that the President of the Republic “must take initiatives for a resumption of negotiations. To achieve that, it’s not enough for him to simply expose Turkish intransigence and express his readiness.”
The President continued the General Secretary of AKEL, “must proceed to proceed to such moves, which on the one hand will not deviate from the basic principles of the Cyprus problem and will not constitute a retreat from the principles of the solution to the problem and on the other hand, will give incentives to the Turkish Cypriot community, but also to Turkey, to return to the agreed framework of the solution”.
In his statements, the General Secretary of AKEL also referred to the proposal submitted by the Party to the President of the Republic last December, which, as he said, “the President simply did not make use of at all and tried to distort it in public, because he never personally discussed our proposal with us. Our appeal is that he utilizes it so that the hope will exist to return to the agreed framework of the solution and resume substantive negotiations with a view to reaching an agreement, otherwise we will constantly be sliding towards partition, which will be disastrous for Cyprus.”
Asked to comment on the specific proposal, the General Secretary of AKEL said that AKEL told the President of the Republic that he must state in a convincing and very clear way that he accepts political equality as the Greek Cypriot side had agreed on it in the convergences recorded. To be questioning the convergences that have been recorded regarding the issues of political equality is inconceivable”. Furthermore, he said that President Anastasiades must “declare that he is ready to start a discussion with Turkey on what will happen after the solution to the Cyprus problem”.
Regarding natural gas, A.Kyprianou said that President Anastasiades should “clarify that it will be a federal competence as provided for in the Christofias-Talat convergence and therefore the Turkish Cypriots will participate in its management, instead of telling them that natural gas is an issue which doesn’t concern them. From there onwards, a Special Fund will be set up, in which the revenues will be deposited and allocated proportionally to the two communities provided, of course, revenues will emerge”.
