The General Secretary of AKEL S.Stefanou: We are very close to the final partition of Cyprus

 

22 July 2023, “Haravgi” newspaper

We are very close to reaching the permanent partition of Cyprus, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of AKEL Stefanos Stefanou pointed out on Saturday in his speech to the 30th Conference of the Student Section of EDON held at the PEO trade union recreation camp in Pervolia.

S.Stefanou said that “we should act with realism, rationalism and with determination and consistency”, noting that AKEL proposes three things to address the situation.

Firstly, he stated, “we should convince the Secretary General of the UN to take a new initiative so we can continue the negotiations from the point where they were interrupted at Crans Montana in 2017, because a very long distance in the direction of a solution had been covered up to the Crans Montana conference”.

The General Secretary of AKEL said that the second point is that “we have to put forward a positive agenda and that is what the President of the Republic is saying and I want to give him credit for that”. AKEL’s view, he noted, is that the content of the positive agenda put forward by the President of the Republic “is not capable of creating momentum for the resumption of the negotiations, nor is what the President of the Republic is putting forward something that will happen now”. He added that given that we do not have the luxury of time, “it has to be done now”.

That’s precisely the reason why AKEL has submitted once again to President Christodoulides its own comprehensive proposal it had forwarded to the former President, Nicos Anastasiades, in December 2020, “that we should formulate a positive agenda by putting at the centre of this agenda the energy issues of the region and how we will handle the issues related to Cypriot natural gas after the solution without going beyond the “red lines” of the Greek Cypriot side”.

The General Secretary of AKEL said that AKEL sought to hear the views of the international community with regards its own proposal “and I have to tell you that our proposal has received a positive response both from the circles of the United Nations and the European Union, as well as from important players in the Eastern Mediterranean region and surrounding to the Cyprus problem”. He also said that AKEL’s proposal regarding natural gas and energy “has become even more topical nowadays due to the fact that the whole world is suffering the consequences of an energy crisis that has primarily been caused by the war in Ukraine”.

The third point, Stefanos Stefanou said, is that “the Republic of Cyprus as the Cyprus Government should address the Turkish Cypriot community by projecting a package of proposals and policies “to support and convince them that we really want a solution to the Cyprus problem and that within the framework of the bi-communal state we can co-manage this state for our present and future”. Furthermore, we need to build trust between the two communities, he added.

S.Stefanou said that AKEL has submitted a comprehensive proposal to the President of the Republic on this issue too.

The General Secretary of AKEL also said that “we want and crave for a solution because we are convinced that this situation we are living in is not something stable. It is sliding towards the worst possible direction and as I said at the beginning we are on the verge of the permanent partition of our homeland. Partition is not a solution”. “The occupied north will be completely ‘Turkified’ by Turkey, the Turkish Cypriot community will disappear and the rest of the free areas of Cyprus will be at the mercy of Turkey’s appetites and intentions,” he pointed out.

This is unfair to the young generation, he said, “and that is exactly why we will seek to continue and intensify our struggles to achieve a solution that will liberate and reunite our country and people within the framework of a bizonal, bicommunal federation.”

Addressing the members of EDON Youth organisation and the Progressive Student Movement ‘Proodeftiki’, the General Secretary of AKEL congratulated them for the struggles they are waging within the student movement for the solution of the Cyprus problem.