UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, believes that something more substantive needs to be done to get the leaders of the island’s two communities back to the negotiating table, and expressed some worry whether a structured process can be achieved once the leaders return to the dialogue.
In an interview with the Cyprus News Agency, he further said that an underlying platform of intercommunal trust is also needed “and I am convinced if it does not exist in the leadership level, it is difficult to substitute it somewhere else.”
Replying to questions about the next steps that should be taken to bring the leaders back to the negotiating table, he said “there are some steps that are being taken and I think they are probably more successful if I do not spell them out.”
“It takes two to tango and requires some will of mutual accommodation, there is the issue of the vote in Parliament itself and people are looking into what can be done there, but there is also a question of how much the Turkish Cypriots will allow this to continue, because you can be right, morally right and make your point but it is always a choice, something that is bad can be somewhat very bad, terrible, catastrophic. That is the choice, the question is how bad it is,” he said.
Asked how the April referendum in Turkey relates to efforts to resume talks, he acknowledged that “any development in the vicinity that is of importance, including the referendum, is of course relevant as a lot of things are relevant but it is not an argument not to talk now, definitely not.”
Quite the contrary, allowing a prolonged pause might influence negatively the dynamics, he said, and expressed the view that “there is no external force behind the absence of meetings, this particular crisis was created in Cyprus and can be solved in Cyprus, this is a Cypriot crisis.”
Asked to qualify his image of a realistic optimist, which could suggest that he is hiding actual problems under the carpet, he disagreed with this view, saying the optimism he expressed was to whether the two leaders will come back to the table.
“I also said that I was quite clear that the bigger issue is whether we will be able to organise ourselves once we are at the table. Of course I am focusing on how they can go back to the table but there is so much I can do because there is a process in Parliament and discussions between the sides will have to happen a little bit directly between them as well on that smaller issue, which is how to go back to the table,” he added.
The much bigger issue, he told CNA, “is whether we will manage to have a structured process once the leaders are back at the table. And here I express a level of worry, am not absolutely certain because I think we have been stuck a while in this last mile issue, everybody has been waiting for the move from the other side, there are certain things which one side would accommodate but only when they themselves are accommodated by the other one first.”
“I am more worried about that, rather than this immediate thing. I am not absolutely convinced that we will make it in the end and that requires an even stronger effort to go that final mile and it is extremely unfortunate that history was brought up again now,” he noted.
Eide said he does not think he has been hiding anything. “I think I am quite balanced, I have said that very many issues which I thought were very difficult – citizenship, territorial readjustment, engaging in dialogue in security – these issues are either solved or close to being solved and that tells me that this can be done but whether it will be done is fundamentally up to the leaders and secondary up to others.”
The UN envoy referred to a formula which he believes can “fly” if people think outside the box, saying that the issue of security is not fundamentally a military issue, and pointing out that a sense of security can be achieved by working on four layers (constitutional, internal, implementation and external).
He explained that the first is in many ways the most important one, to get to a deal to convince all Cypriots feel that this political construction will work after a solution, in the long run and that the state will deliver on its promises.
The second relates to a system of internal security, meaning that the courts, the laws, the police are effective and legitimate, impartial and decent.
For the third, an international mechanism is being proposed to monitor implementation and this should be the substitute of the current guarantees system, he said, stressing that this mechanism should not be superior to the Cypriot authorities.
The fourth layer indicates that Cyprus at some point, post unification, needs some kind of partnership with other countries for defence issues, traditional and non traditional, such as cooperation on terrorism and some kind of stability in this neighbourhood.
“The only place you can even envisage some kind of foreign military presence, if you have it, will be here which is actually going back to basics because this is what the Treaty of Alliance stipulated and we know what happened,” he told CNA.
This, he explained, can only work as a package, and it is based on long intense constructive negotiations with all players. He said this has not been endorsed but there has been a constructive attitude to encourage the UN to develop these ideas.
“Until now conversation about security has been very simple, the one side will say this and the other say that, this conversation does not take you anywhere. I respect the official position of the sides, until you change it,” he added.
Asked whether he thinks that Greece and Turkey should be involved in this set up, given the history of the place, he replied “ there is no escape, there is no way they will not be. The history of the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 with the consent of the guarantor powers, in three Treaties. If you do not change it, this will remain. We are not inventing Cyprus now, Cyprus exists, it is divided but it exists.”
“If you want to change – which I think you should, by the way – I am in favour of change, I do not think you can have this current system of guarantees, it cannot continue, it has to be substituted, if you want to substitute it you have to substitute it with Greece and Turkey because you cannot do it without them,” he said, adding that “it is an observation of the real world, this is not my view.”
Asked about support he feels he has in efforts to resume the dialogue, he said the Cypriot people, through civil society and all those political forces who are pro settlement are his best supporters, repeating that the UN does not own this process.
“We are not going to take it over, even if the leaders ask for arbitration, I would not do it, we respect the leaders led nature of the process,” he said, which means – as he explained – that “there are certain things I cannot do, I cannot fix this for them, I cannot provide the magical formula and I do not think a dinner alone would solve this one.”
“This requires something more substantive and it is not fundamentally the UN that can do it,” he pointed out.
Questioned on his view that during the Geneva talks in January the anticipated progress on issues which can be solved in Cyprus was not achieved, he said the sense of security that needs to be installed in society is not principally solved in the chapter of security and guarantees and referred to political equality and shared ownership of the federal state, a legal system that works, police that function.
These, he said, are intra Cypriot issues which can only and frankly should only be discussed between the Cypriots but which is a prerequisite of reducing the emphasis on the military part of security matters, adding “there is a lot we need to do to lay the groundwork before we call the guarantors.”
Asked to comment on Turkey’s decision to send the vessel Barbaros in the Eastern Mediterranean in relation to the peace talks, Eide talked about what his own country Norway did when it was faced with a dispute with Russia and energy matters to deal with.
“We abstained from this issue (energy), conflict and gas is very complex, it is more conducive to a peaceful rise as an energy nation if the problem is solved,” he said, and hastened to add that “this is just an observation, am not saying anything on Cyprus.”
