United Nations Chief of Mission in Cyprus Colin Stewart, center, hosts a meeting between Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides, right, and the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots Ersin Tatar, second left, at the UN official’s residence inside a UN-controlled buffer zone cutting across the divided capital Nicosia, Monday. [Petros Karadjias/AP]
A meeting between Cyprus President Nicos Christodoulides and Ersin Tatar, the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots in the occupied part of the ethnically-split island, ended without an agreement on Monday, with both sides failing to reach a decision on a deal aimed at building trust that included opening new crossing points across a UN-controlled buffer zone.
The two said in a joint statement that they have instructed their representatives to continue talks and that they would meet “in the coming days.”
The leaders met for nearly two hours at the official residence of Colin Stewart, the UN peacekeeping force’s chief of mission in Cyprus, to hammer out an agreement on opening new crossing points at specific points along a 180-kilometer (120-mile) UN-controlled buffer zone that cuts across the island.
But the leaders left the meeting without announcing any crossing point openings. They affirmed in the joint statement that they “both believe that opening of new crossing points is critical to promote people-to-people contacts, strengthen economic ties and build trust.”
The dispute appears to be over the location of the crossing points, which would be of mutual benefit. Christodoulides said after the meeting that Tatar rejected a specific crossing point location and “wasn’t ready” to agree on a package of eight trust-building initiatives that included the setting up of joint committees on youth affairs, as well as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“Everything depends on when the Turkish side is ready,” Christodoulides said.
There are eight such crossing points along the entire length of the buffer zone, enabling people from each side to cross daily – many, primarily Turkish Cypriots, to work – since the first such crossings opened in April 2003.
But people on both sides want to see more such crossing points opened to ease and speed up their commutes across the dividing line that was cemented in 1974 when Turkey invaded a few days after a coup mounted by supporters of uniting the island with Greece.
A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains more than 35,000 troops in the island’s northern third.
A crossing point deal would have given a much-needed boost to UN efforts to get formal talks on resolving the island’s ethnic division up and running again after a seven-year hiatus. The United Nations will host Christodoulides and Tatar along with senior officials from the island’s so-called guarantors – Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom – in Switzerland in March to figure out how to get negotiations back on track.
But an insistence by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots on ditching a UN-endorsed plan to reunify Cyprus as a federation made up of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones and demanding a two-state deal instead has dampened hopes of a peace deal.
Greek Cypriots won’t sign up to any deal that formally partitions the island, and they oppose any clause, as demanded by Turkey, to permanently station Turkish troops on the island and to grant military intervention rights to Ankara. [AP, Kathimerini]