Catching up, one

I put up several posts during the renewed negotiations over Cyprus last year. It's interesting re-reading them now: I can see how my initial hope gradually turned to cynicism.

As you may recall, the outcome was a proposal by Kofi Annan to be voted on in separate referendums by both parts of Cyprus: the mostly Greek south and the mostly Turkish north, illegally occupied by Turkish troops since 1974. Both had to agree to the proposal for it to be passed.

The plan would have created a federation united by a weak central government, an outcome Greek Cypriots saw with justification as establishing de facto independence for the north. When it became clear that the Greek Cypriots were going to reject the deal, Annan, backed by the US and the EU (both of which wanted the whole thing to just go away), tried to turn the screws. It didn't work and the Greek Cypriot south overwhelmingly rejected the plan, for all practical purposes killing it.

In the wake of that, Annan refused to consider why his proposal might have failed, preferring to charge that Nicosia never wanted an agreement and to urge new openings to Turkish Cypriots as a reward for their endorsement of the plan. (An endorsement which was hardly surprising since it gave them just about everything they could have wanted.)

Apparently, time does not always allow for cooler heads, as a report in Kathimerini (Greece) earlier this week indicates:

Nicosia protested strongly yesterday to the United Nations after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wanted the Security Council to endorse his report of last year, which recommended relaxing the isolation of the island's Turkish-occupied part.

After meeting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York, Annan said that he would ask the Council to re-examine the document that he put together some two months after the Greek Cypriots rejected his blueprint for reunification in a referendum in April 2004. Annan said he hoped the Security Council would "take action" on it. In the report, Annan laid much of the blame for the unpopularity of his plan at the feet of President Tassos Papdopoulos.

Considering that there is a move in the UN to try to arrange a new round of talks about the future of Cyprus, Cypriot Foreign Minister George Iacovou's description of Annan's statement as "badly timed" seems apt: It hardly seems wise to begin such an effort by placing all the blame on one (especially the wrong) side.

Ego is a bad quality in a peace negotiator.

Footnote: The previous posts on Cyprus:
January 26, 2004
February 5, 2004
February 14, 2004
February 20, 2004
March 17, 2004
March 23, 2004
April 5, 2004
April 18, 2004
April 24, 2004
June 1, 2004.
June 28, 2004
July 21, 2004
November 13, 2004