Cyprus Talks: Greek Cypriot President pledges to find negotiated reunification settlement

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades on Friday said the government is trying to mobilise countries that maintain friendly relations with Turkey to exert their influence and help find a negotiated settlement to reunite the divided island. 

Speaking in Nicosia, Anastasiades said, he seeks the support of these countries to help Ankara realise that it must abandon its demands – which are not accepted by the Greek Cypriot community and which may ensure the security of one community but constitute a threat for the other – so that a Cyprus settlement can be achieved.

In an interview with the Cyprus News Agency, Anastasiades stressed that achieving a settlement will remain his primary and most important goal if he is re-elected.

Asked if he considers that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are ready to accept a bizonal, bicommunal federation as a solution, he said that people will accept a solution that will not favour one community over the other, one that will lead to a functional, viable settlement that will not collapse the next day.

He stressed the need to safeguard human rights and freedoms and also the state’s functionality, to avoid the possibility of it being paralysed and not being able to function.

If there is a well-established state, and prospects to create conditions for a normal way ahead, for a state that will be functional, those who believe in this state will be able to accept it. However, if it paves the way for something else, then it will not be accepted,” Anastasiades said.

On how he is planning to promote the resumption of talks on the Cyprus problem, if re-elected, Anastasiades said that he has already conveyed to the UN Secretary General his determination to continue the dialogue on the internal aspects of the Cyprus problem, while, at the same time, he reiterated that a new conference on Cyprus must be well prepared so that a new effort will not fail.

According to him, the inter-communal dialogue can resume immediately to overcome existing difficulties, problems and disagreements relating to the internal aspects of the Cyprus problem, while at the same time an international conference must be prepared to finally lead, ‘through proposals that the government have submitted and through negotiations, to a really independent and sovereign state, without obsolete guarantee treaties, intervention rights and the presence of the Turkish occupation army’.

I believe that in this way a new effort will be able to bear fruit, Anastasiades said.

He added that the government is exercising a multi-level foreign policy, referring to his meetings with US officials, the Russian president and permanent members of the security council.

Source: CyprusMail