Christodoulides will approach Tatar meeting with ‘absolute seriousness’

Newly-elected President Nikos Christodoulides will do everything possible to achieve some kind of result during his informal meeting next week with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, he said on Sunday.

In statements after voting in the election for Paphos bishop, Christodoulides repeated statements he made last week that the current state of affairs cannot be the solution to the Cyprus problem and that talks must resume as soon as possible.

He said he would approach his meeting with Tatar on Thursday “with absolute seriousness… to see how we can break the deadlock ….”

“Things are not easy, I know the situation very well but that does not mean that we will not try from our side to do everything that is possible,” he added.

The two men will meet at the residence of the UN Special Representative Colin Stewart within the UN-controlled Nicosia airport.

He also mentioned the EU council meeting due at the end of March, which would be his first as president, saying he would have the opportunity there to have bilateral meetings. He reiterated that he had already spoken about the need for the EU to play a leading role in breaking the Cyprus impasse.

Christodoulides has a ‘working document’ to which he referred during the campaign, designed to explain why the EU can help break the Cyprus deadlock.

In response to a question about closer relations between Athens and Ankara in the aftermath of the recent earthquake, Christodoulides said Cyprus was not against the tightening of relations between Greece and Turkey.

“Besides everyone realises that full normalisation without resolving the Cyprus issue cannot be achieved,” he added. “In the event that a new, better climate is being created, let’s take advantage of it also in relation to the prospects of resolving the Cyprus problem.”

Noting that the March EU summit would also be attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Christodoulides said his team had already sent a message to New York and if some sort of meeting was possible, “it would be a very positive development”.

If there was something to report to Guterres following his meeting with Tatar, that might help faciliate a meeting with Guterres, he added.

Tatar meanwhile dissed the notion of more EU involvement. He said regardless of what is said in pre-election campaigns, in the end, the Greek Cypriot side, no matter who is in office, has one goal and that is the promotion of the sovereignty of Cyprus above all else.

As far as his meeting with Christodoulides was concerned, he said he had no problem having a coffee informally and if “the other side accepts our sensitivities, our red lines, our sovereign equality, formal negotiations can always begin”.

The head of the nationalist National Unity Party (UBP), Ertugrul Hasipoglou, claimed, according to Kibris that Nikos Christodoulides, during the negotiations to resolve the Cypriot issue, “played the role of the bad cop”within the Greek Cypriot negotiating team.

He also claimed that “Christodoulides is the person who caused the collapse of the talks in Crans-Montana”.
“Christodoulides was completely the bad cop. In the same team was his [presidential] opponent, [Andreas] Mavroyiannis who always played the good cop,” he added.