THE FOREIGN Ministry will be lodging a complaint to the multilateral organisation, the United Nations, over the Istanbul dinner affair where Cyprus’ foreign minister Marcos Kyprianou was specifically not invited as a guest to the banquet hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

The dinner was hosted in Istanbul for the pleasure of delegates of the 4th UN Meeting for the Least Developed Countries. Failure to invite the Cypriot minister was part of Turkey’s long-held policy not to recognise the Cyprus Republic, explained Kyprianou.

Speaking from Istanbul, the minister yesterday clarified that, “Cyprus was present at the meeting, as a UN member state, and the Cypriot flag was present in the room”.

However, given that the dinner was not organised by the UN, the decision as to who gets a meal courtesy of the Turkish president was one left to the host country.

“It was not a UN invitation, but one by the Turkish state,” said Kyprianou, adding “this was the least one could expect from a country that occupies territory of a UN member state”.

There was some respite however as Kyprianou did get an invite to the working dinner hosted by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on the sidelines of the Meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

On the sidelines of the Istanbul meetings, Kyprianou took the opportunity to have bilateral meetings sidelines with his counterparts from Serbia, Croatia

Source: Cyprus Mail