Security the most important element after Cyprus solution

The ability of a state to provide security to its citizens is the element which will contribute to the smooth functioning of the state the day after a solution, Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades has stressed.
“Providing security to all the citizens, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, is that element which will create and contribute to the establishment of a state which will be able to function the day after a solution,” he said addressing the event at Filoxenia conference centre, in Nicosia.

Referring to the economy, he said that thanks to the cooperation of all political parties, the economy is now on a course of sustainable growth.

“It is necessary to continue to cooperate wisely and create prospects so that through understanding it will be possible to introduce modern trends which must prevail in order to hand over, in 2023 (end of his current term in office) a European state,” President Anastasiades noted.

At the same time, he pointed out that over and above everything else government efforts focus on ensuring that Cyprus becomes a “normal state” as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said, adding that “a normal state cannot have guarantees by third countries nor can it accept the presence of troops which would supposedly guarantee its existence.”

The government, President Anastasiades said, has followed such policies building ties of friendship with neighbouring states “to ensure that we are in no danger from anyone.”

The only one who has yet to join this great family in the region is Turkey, he pointed out, adding that “if Turkey really wished to contribute, as it should, to a Cyprus solution all it had to do would have been to accept the recommendations, not just our proposals, but those which have been accepted by the United Nations and in particular by the Secretary General.”

The President reiterated his readiness to continue the dialogue, in full knowledge of the red lines.

Anastasiades said that he and the Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci have agreed that “the security of one community cannot be a threat to the other.

“We have also agreed that the presence of occupation troops and Turkey’s rights of guarantee and intervention cannot be considered as that which we are seeking,” he noted.

This, he explained, may provide the Turkish Cypriots with what they describe as “security” but at the same time it is a threat for the Greek Cypriot community.

“All these are not prerequisites or terms for the start of a dialogue. These are fundamental elements of the solution we are seeking, the solution which the Turkish Cypriots themselves should be seeking too so that we, as Cypriots, can survive,” the President added.

Nobody is asking anybody to relinquish his ethnic origins or his national identity, his culture and traditions.

Cyprus has been divided since the 1974 Turkish invasion. Repeated rounds of UN-led talks have not led to a comprehensive settlement to reunite the country under a federal roof. The latest such attempt, in July last year, ended inconclusively.