Eide: missing current opportunity would be ‘an historic failure’, big powers want Cyprus off the table
September 30th, 2016 CNA News Service
Eide: missing current opportunity would be ‘an historic failure’, big powers want Cyprus off the table
Missing the current opportunity for a Cyprus solution would be an historic failure, the UN secretary-general`s special adviser for Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide has said.
He also said he had the full backing of the big powers and the UN Security Council who wanted to see the Cyprus issue of the table because they “have bigger fish to fry”.
In an interview with the UN news centre, Eide said the Cyprus negotiations were in a very advanced stage, but added: “I need to be honest”, there are “outstanding issues”. He said a deal was “closer than ever before, but there’s still a way to go”.
“And I don’t want to leave the impression that a deal is around the corner, because we still have to settle a few, but important issues.”
Asked if there was a danger of reverting to the status quo, Eide said that there was definitely a risk that “we lose what we now have achieved because we have, in a sense, arrived at a plateau, from which you can either go to a solution or a downward spiral”.
“I wouldn’t say conflict as in the violent, physical conflict, but I think it is clear for all of us – and that is not only me saying it, but it is also well known to other people who are dealing with it on both sides – that the alternative is not any longer just the status quo. It’s not just a stable, safe status quo that will continue forever, in the sense that, the Cypriots have been living in a state of exception,” he said.
He added that both sides agreed the current situation was unacceptable and must be overcome, and he said he would be very worried if people thought they could “just cool down this and there will be a new chance in five or ten years”.
“This is in no way to suggest that I know what the future will look like, but my sense and my own experience with international relations, suggest that losing this opportunity is not good for you; neither for Cypriots nor for somebody trying to be helpful in the neighbourhood. So the region needs this and it is so close that to miss this opportunity would be a historic failure,” Eide said.
Asked whether President Nicos Anastasiades` comment at the UN General Assembly that a deal could be done by the end of the year was realistic, he said: “Absolutely, it’s ambitious but feasible”.
“The great powers have, in their perspective, have bigger fish to fry, and would rather see this issue off the table, and hence I’m one of those envoys of the secretary-general that has a united Security Council behind me”.
“That’s no small feat, and that’s something I also impress on my Cypriot friends, that this is a value that we want to use when we have it. And we also have very constructive openings from the guarantor powers that they’re ready to discuss, when time has come, to agree on what their role will be, or rather, what it will not be – depending on whom you ask – in the future settlement,” Eide said.
The UN envoy said that numerically speaking, most issues were behind the leaders “they are done and settled”.
Volume-wise, most of the deal is written down, he said. However, the most difficult issues were not those tackled first, “so of course we need to create the space, and I don’t necessarily mean the physical space, but the framework in which we’re able to deal with those final issues, in an expedited but also efficient and proper manner. That’s what we’re looking for right now,” he said.
Referring to the UN-proposed solution plan (the Annan plan), that was rejected in 2004 by the Greek Cypriots but approved by the Turkish Cypriots, Eide said the `the final version of the Annan plan was written by the UN, and neither leader on either side actually endorsed it`.
“So maybe, with hindsight, it was not that surprising that we got the outcome it gave,” he said.
The Cyprus process, he said, has to be leader-led; it has to be owned by the Cypriots themselves. But the UN’s job was to help them, to facilitate and coordinate the overall international effort.
The UN in Cyprus, he said, not only facilitates the meetings between the leaders and the negotiating teams, but a vast array of 16 working groups, five technical committees, and all possible issues.
“So basically almost all the formal communication between the north and south happens through the UN. Not only in the search for a settlement, but also on the daily basis. For instance, the only police cooperation that exists between the two sides goes via the United Nations, so you can imagine what would happen on a small, and de-facto, heavily integrated island, if there was no contact on this issue,” said Eide.
“Both in the current and in the future, I think the UN has a role”.
The two leaders are expected to return to negotiations on October 4. (CNA)