Government ‘definitely not’ satisfied with UNSG’s bleak reports on Cyprus

The government is “definitely not” satisfied by the UN Good Offices and Unficyp draft reports as they do not reflect reality, President Nicos Anastasiades said on Wednesday.

Commenting on the reports and the government’s dissatisfaction with them during the CyBC Vasilopita cake cutting ceremony, the president said: “[The government] is definitely not [satisfied], but we’re talking about the draft. You should understand that diplomatic efforts are being made to make the necessary correction so that what is recorded in the draft corresponds to reality, which at the moment the draft does not adequately express.”

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres last week gave a bleak outlook for Cyprus and any chance of solving the Cyprus problem in the draft reports.

And following an announcement in the north that the Cetinkaya football stadium in the buffer zone is to be inaugurated, Anastasiades called on the UN to be “especially careful and objective,” when recording the facts in the report.

“The United Nations should be particularly careful, objective and the various movements or the various reports should record the orders given by resolutions of the Security Council and especially the parameters within which the secretary-general and those of his representatives who are either in Cyprus or elsewhere are obliged to operate within,” he said.

Anastasiades’ sentiments were echoed by the foreign ministry, which condemned the reports’ lack of objectivity and equation of the Republic of Cyprus with authorities in the north and Turkey, which are attempting to upgrade the status of the breakaway regime.

The ministry said they had informed UN representatives in both New York and Cyprus that an objective recording needs to be made of the situation on the island over the last six months.

“We would expect the [report of the] secretary-general to indicate who is attempting to upgrade the breakaway entity in the occupied territories, while trying to impose new fait accompli at the expense of Cyprus and its people, and not to follow the logic of equal distances, referring to a harshening of the rhetoric on both sides, as a result of which there can be no common ground between the two sides. The Republic of Cyprus cannot be equated with the rhetoric of Mr Ertugruloglu, Mr Tatar, and the officials of Ankara,” the ministry said.

This would presuppose that the reports would be clear on the need for commitment and compliance by both sides and the secretary-general himself to efforts to resume negotiations for a settlement of the Cyprus problem under the agreed solution framework and based on UN Security Council Resolutions.

“After all, the only common ground that should guide the parties and constitute the institutional framework for a Cyprus settlement is the agreed basis for a solution and the UN resolutions, which the secretary-general himself has called for to be followed faithfully,” the ministry said.

“It is obvious that in order to be objective, reports must not include subjective opinions and/or assessments of the secretary-general’s representatives that are not borne out by the facts,” the ministry said.

Commenting on the sentiment of the Turkish Cypriot people in the north and their disapproval of Ankara’s two-state solution rhetoric, the ministry said it is clear that they are dissatisfied with the current ‘government’, as reflected in the results of the ‘municipal elections’, which saw the opposition take control of most of the ‘municipalities’.

The foreign ministry said that it looks forward to the conclusion of discussions on the adoption of the security council resolution on the renewal of the mandate of the peacekeeping force, which is also the institutional guide for the presence and operation of Unficyp in Cyprus.