SPEECH
BY AMBASSADOR KLOSSON in Astoria
12 January, 2004
Let me start with a slightly
different spot in the way Phil and Peter and Savvas have set this up because I
really want to share with you a slightly different perspective to begin with and
then we will do the other one. Too often this whole issue is
Cyprus
and the word that immediately follows Cyprus 99% of the time is ‘problem’.
And I don’t want to start it there.
Bilateral
relations
I want to start with the fact
that
Cyprus
is now joining the EU and what does that mean for Americans, what does that
mean for us. What it means is that
Cyprus
is not only joining
Europe
, it is also joining the Transatlantic Partnership and therefore
Cyprus
is not only getting new opportunities from our perspective, it is getting new
responsibilities as well. And so although the Embassy spends an enormous amount
of time trying to promote a settlement we also do other things and there’s
four other priorities that I think as Americans I’d like you to be aware of.
One we count on
Cyprus
to step up to the plate particularly now as a member of the EU, now until May
it has a voice in the EU and after May it will have a vote. And this makes
Cyprus
more important to the
United States
. One of those areas is the war on terrorism and efforts to stop the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And we have been very happy with
the kind of cooperation we’ve seen since 9/11 on this issue. In the time that
I’ve been there, one of the important things that happened particularly in
connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom is that the Government of Cyprus granted
military over flight rights for our aircrafts that were part of this operation.
That’s important, that’s stepping up to responsibilities. More recently
there was a Donor’s Conference in Spain last October and again Cyprus -
normally the government does not have a tradition in doing this type of thing -
they sent a delegation to the Conference, they’ve made a pledge so they were
being counted as part of the international community that says “we’ve got to
make Iraq a better place because that will make the world a better place”. The
same with the proliferation issue. We’ve been working with them again on a
couple of initiatives that were part of this international effort to make us all
safer.
Cyprus
is not just the
Cyprus
issue,
Cyprus
is now a player in these kinds of issues and when we bring these to the
Government we are having a much more vigorous and cooperative discussion with
them.
Second area is law
enforcement cooperation and there again there’s very good news over the past
year. Very recently for example there was a US dollar counterfeiting operation
that was taken down in
Greece
though cooperation with the Cypriot Police, Greek policy and American
Authorities. One of the issues that’s kind of coming into focus in the States
is Trafficking in Persons and this is a terrible issue but it’s only through
cooperation from all the governments who potentially are affected (there were
countries who were affected by this and we’ve got rid of it), and this is
again the kind of issue that we are looking to the Government of Cyprus to
cooperate on. There’s a whole range of foreign policy issues that we
bring up to Cyprus now that they are a member of the EU and I think the
diplomats and the foreign ministry as well as other ministries around town are
certainly learning that there’s a huge agenda out there which they are having
to master but I think things are going pretty well.
And finally there’s a
large commercial and business agenda and I know some of you are doing business
in Cyprus and if you need our help, come to Embassy and that’s what we are
there for. The door is open and we are very eager to assist American companies
if they need help in
Cyprus
. There’s a good economic relationship already. We are the seventh largest
supplier and we’d like to make it even better.
Cyprus
Issue
Now to the
Cyprus
issue. Phil and Peter and Savvas have talked about this being a very critical
period. I think it is. I am not going to predict that this is the year of Cyprus
but I really do think that this the time when people like me and other people
who are a lot more important than me such as the President, are really putting
their shoulder to this task in order to see serious movement. I think that
Europe
which has been a catalyst to the extent that we’ve seen progress in recent
years, remains a catalyst. I think the movement that we’ve seen in the EU last
month reiterated that it very much wants to see a reunited
Cyprus
to join the EU in May. We are certainly seeing how the Turkish Cypriots are
very anxious to go through the door and in the case of Greek Cypriots it seems
to me that now there’s no longer the anxiety, about maybe somehow the
accession being delayed, that there’s actually some renewed sense of
confidence. And it’s this sense of confidence actually that can contribute to
the settlement process. And then finally
Turkey
also, this Turkish Government has made accession to the EU a top priority.
Our interests, the American
interests, we have very important stakes in the
Cyprus
settlement and some of them have already been discussed. Certainly we want to
see a
Cyprus
where all the people who live on the island will benefit and that sort of
solution we can bring about. You have Cypriots across the island who will
benefit economically and culturally and politically. Certainly a Cyprus
settlement also resolves differences between Greece and Turkey which could very
much complicate NATO organization; we
are increasingly looking into the type of even broader tasks around the globe
and obviously a Cyprus settlement would also, as the EU has publicly stated,
facilitate Turkey’s European aspirations. So when you add all that up, it’s
very much like a win-win all the way around. From our perspective that brings
peace and stability and prosperity in that critical region in
Europe
.
It seems to me from my
perspective on the island that we’ve seen a number of developments over the
last year or so which sort of push in the right direction. One of them is the UN proposal which has been developed and we were
all disappointed that we didn’t get to a settlement last March and I was in
The Hague
with my good friend Tom Weston who I am sure you all know. We are all very
disappointed that it was the Turkish Cypriot side that blocked that from coming
to a successful conclusion but nevertheless this is a very comprehensive plan
that can be further improved, but there’s an enormous amount of good work that
has gone into it, and it’s on the table in a way that previous UN proposals
had been less fleshed out (the Set of Ideas and things like that). This is a
plan that after some further discussion and negotiation could be put to a vote.
So that’s a positive thing that’s out there.
The second positive thing I think, and those of you that have been
to Cyprus over the last year will appreciate this is the fact that its now
easier to go north and south across the buffer zone and you’ve had well over 2
million crossings of people. I think that has had a very positive impact overall
on the island. What you have, what I have sensed from talking to both Greek
Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots on the island now, is a sense that they can put a
face on the other side and the idea of a settlement is no longer something that
is simply a dream, or something left to ones imagination. There is something
more concrete and more palpable since you can actually interact with folks and
politicians have gone back and forth, particularly leaders of Chambers of
Commerce have gone back and forth. There is an organization created with the US
getting involved at all, composed of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and
it’s focused on a solution that you can midwife by the fact that you can
actually get together having controversies over passed and things like that. So
I think the fact that there has been this increased interaction and importantly
without any intercommunal issue or problem. There has been no incident and
that’s remarkable when you think about the years of separation that have taken
place. The fact that its well over well over 2 million crossings, that makes the
idea of a settlement much more concrete and much more real to everybody, people
are talking about this.
I would say the third thing that helps really is the political
format that we’ve seen in the north. Last Fall about this time, in the early
winter we saw demonstrations in the northern part of
Nicosia
in sort of unprecedented numbers. Huge
numbers of Turkish Cypriots were in the streets calling for a solution, those
voices calling for a solution were carried forward into the ballot box for that
vote that took place last month. It was a vote for a solution. I think the final
result was a split, apparently an even split in the seats but I think if you
look at the trend line what you see is that those favoring a solution are on the
way up and those parties that are opposed to the UN plan went down. The
established parties that campaigned against the UN plan lost between a third and
half their support. The pro-solution parties which were favoring the UN Plan,
they increased their vote count by about 70% and doubled their number of seats
in their assemblies. This was very much a vote for a solution, what really drove
it home for me was the fact that in some of the areas which were going to return
to Greek Cypriot administration, even in some of those areas such as Morphou,
and I know some people come from Morphou this evening, some of those areas the
majority voted in favor of solution knowing they would have to move. That’s a
vote of hope over the kind of fear, the themes of fear that we saw during the
election campaign. It was a difficult period, the embassy spent a lot of time
monitoring this and trying to help people understand what was in the end in UN
proposal and what wasn’t. We certainly has a lot of reliable reports about
politically motivated hirings and firings by the government, reports of vote
buying and voter intimidation, pressure on the media, manipulation of
citizenship rules and voter administration rules. There is no doubt, there are
very reliable reports of that activity. So it’s all the more remarkable the
way the vote went, given the pressures that a lot of the voters were subjected
to. But I think those three elements: the Annan plan, the fact that there has
been a great increase in interaction, plus the political field in the north are
developments that are pushing in the right direction.
So were does that leave us? Where it essentially leaves us is with UN
Secretary General’s Good Offices Mission and the Plan. I think what you have
if you look at it all together, is you have the UN, which as I said can be
further improved through negotiation, you have a viable structure and you can
place that on the foundation of recently confirmed good will, that’s what all
these crossings add up to. So the way forward is to get the negotiations
restarted and that’s what we are working on. The Secretary General after the
negotiations stopped last March said he was prepared to make available the Good
Offices Mission again and help the parties bring his proposal to a successful
conclusion, which means putting it to a vote in a referendum. But he needed to
be assured of the political commitment being there. So what he has said is that
he needs all of the parties demonstrating necessary political commitment in
order for the UN Good Offices Mission to resume and negotiations to start up. He
has defined that as that the parties have to commit to finalize the Plan and put
it to a referendum by a certain date and negotiations would then be in that kind
of framework. What the
US
and others are trying to do is
encourage the parties to make a commitment so that we can get these negotiations
under way. I think what you can say is that the solution is certainly possible
by May 1st but it’s going to take commitment on the part of the
political leaders in order to make that happen. So that’s what we are trying
to encourage from the political leaders both on and off the island. It is a
complicated issue to get that necessary political commitment.
UN Talks
I think if you look back on the UN talks a couple of things become clear:
one is that no solution can be imposed and the UN framework does
not impose a solution, its probably the most democratic framework there is
because at the end of the day a solution only comes about if a majority of
people both on the Turkish-Cypriot side sand on the Greek-Cypriot side vote in
favor of that solution. But I think it’s pretty clear that neither side can
force a solution on the other. In fact if you think about it, I don’t think
that kind of solution would be terribly good and I would question how
sustainable it would be.
I think the second point is that the longer the problem goes on
unresolved, the more costly it becomes. It’s very clear the kind of costs
Turkish-Cypriots are bearing because of a non-solution. I think President
Papadopoulos has been increasingly identifying some of the difficulties that he
and Greek-Cypriots will face if a divided
Cyprus
goes into the European Union. He’s
been talking and other Greek-Cypriot leaders have been talking about the danger
that what is now a buffer zone could take on a more formal character. This is
something that they very much don’t want to see. If you are in the European
Union as a member and this becomes an additional complication that you would
like to avoid.
A third point, is property. I spent a lot of the Fall in the north
talking with all kinds of Turkish-Cypriots across the spectrum and what I was
picking up was a sense that if there’s no real prospect then it may well be,
as some of the kids already have done, they go away to school and sometimes
don’t come back, but what I was hearing in some ways was that some of the
parents would also then want to leave. As they are considered citizens of the
Republic of Cyprus they would then come south and take advantage and use the
Greek-Cypriot courts, the Republic of Cyprus courts to try to get at least
compensation for their property. So I think this again is an issue recognized by
a number of the Greek Cypriot political leaders. So there are complications if
the
Cyprus
solution, if the
Cyprus
problem does not get resolved, even
with
Cyprus
as a member of the EU.
So let me just leave you that I really do think that a
Cyprus
solution is possible, it’s up to the
leaders to seize this moment or I’m afraid it will pass, but the
US
will remain very active in trying to
help everybody as this could be the year of
Cyprus.
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