Any measures should assist the procedure of the solution and not substitute it

AKEL hasn’t any briefing whatsoever about the content of the letter sent by President Anastasiades to the UN Secretary General. Nor was there any consultation on the part of the President with the political forces before the letter was sent, as, in our view, should have been done. We also point out that there was no response from the President to the proposal submitted to him by AKEL on how the Greek Cypriot side should act in the period ahead of us.

As for the reports claiming the President proposing Confidence Building Measures (CBM’s), we recall that recipes for the implementation of grandiose CBMs without the simultaneous discussion of the substance of the Cyprus problem, had been attempted in the past as well, for example in 1993-94 and led to a stalemate.

AKEL’s position is that any measures should assist the procedure of the solution of the Cyprus problem and not substitute it. Otherwise, projecting CBM’s in essence undermines the effort by the United Nations to resume substantive negotiations with a view to achieving a strategic understanding on the Guterres Framework, something which will essentially render the overall solution of the Cyprus problem inevitable.