Sound familiar? Remember the good old days when there were Cyprus negotiations, or the bad old days when there were Cyprus negotiations, depending on your perspective, naturally?
Alvaro de Soto, is of course old news in Cyprus and is not likely to be resurrected any more than the hated Annan plan that he authored.
A new book, however, gives several new insights into de Soto’s five years as the UN Secretary-general’s special envoy for Cyprus.
The book is called Kings of Peace, Pawns of War; the Untold Story of Peace-Making and is written by Harriet Martin. With a foreword by Kofi Annan, Martin’s book looks in depth at five high-profile UN mediators, interviews them, and talks to those who knew them throughout various negotiations around the globe, including Cyprus.
She has gathered comments from old sparring partners Rauf Denktash and Glafcos Clerides, President Tassos Papadopoulos’ right-hand man Tasos Tzonis and a few other players in the early stages of the negotiations that eventually failed in Burgenstock in Switzerland in March 2004.
It’s no surprise that de Soto garnered the title of ‘The Chess Master’ in Martin’s book, which is written with a liberal smattering of humour that will certainly appeal to Cyprob addicts.
“Over coffee and nougat ice-cream, de Soto reflects on what went wrong in the final phase when the Greek Cypriots rejected his plan at referendum,” writes Martin. “And he comes out, as he commonly does, with a Shakespearean quote: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’.”
He was speaking of course of Denktash, Clerides and Papadopoulos. Martin describes Denktash as very likeable. “But he does go on,” she adds, wondering how de Soto managed to listen to him for so long.
“The answer is, he fell asleep. Not often and only in extremis. On occasion, he would drop off listening to Greek Cypriots too. Both sides complain of this, but it is a complaint tinged more with affection than indignation.”
Quoting Michaelis Papapetrou, Clerides’ advisor at the time, Martin said that, despite Denktash’s attempts to limit de Soto to a “fly on the wall” role, he ended up playing the lead in the early stages.
Papapetrou quoted Denktash as saying: “Your presence here amounts to a picture hanging on the wall, you say nothing, you are not part of the orocess.”
“And de Soto patiently smiled and said nothing. But step by step he established himself not only as part of the process, but as the protagonist of the process.” said Papapetrou.
De Soto pretty much admits to being the architect of the Annan plan, which his team eventually nicknamed “The Plonk” due to the noise it made when it fell on the floor. He called his team ‘the plonkitects’.
According to Martin’s book, de Soto says he told the Secretary-general early in 2002 that the UN would have to formulate its own reunification plan, because “these chaps are never going to come up with it”.
But it was vital that they didn’t do this heavy-handedly. “We had to give them enough time though, so there could never be any accusation that we muscled ourselves in,” de Soto is quoted as saying.
Papapetrou said it was only in retrospect that they realised de Soto was not just pushing the negotiation forward, he was moulding it every step of the way. “It was only when we saw the plan that we understood the rationale and logic behind it,” said Papapetrou,
The author quotes de Soto at some point as telling the protagonists: “The way this is going you chaps aren’t likely to agree to anything and we will have to put something before you.”
“Clerides accepted this, but Denktash groaned,” Martin adds.
She writes that with Denktash as a sparring partner, Clerides came across as a moderate and reasonable man.
“Over tea in his drawing room he chuckles and takes another sip of tea.”
“I am sure both Rauf and I could see through it. But de Soto had to try,” said Clerides.
But by March 2003, Denktash had walked out on The Hague talks and Clerides had been replaced by Papadopoulos as President. Martin then takes the reader through the infamous New York meeting where both sides were bullied into agreeing to a referendum on the Annan plan.
Papadopoulos’ election, says de Soto, was a fatal blow to the Turkish Cypriots’ bargaining position. “With Papadopoulos in power they probably lost their rooks, and bishops and knights as well.” But it wasn’t just a question of what the Turkish Cypriots lost; Papadopoulos’ election was to prove a blow for the whole process. “Everything changed when Papadopoulos was elected,” said de Soto, who admitted he did not see it at the time.
“He was not only not playing ball at Burgenstock, he went so far as to play hooky,” he said.
“De Soto went to great lengths to get to the heart of his negotiators’ needs,” writes Martin, but made no headway with Papadopoulos.
She said de Soto once passed an hour chatting to Denktash in his swimming pool over the meaning of sovereignty. He showed interest in his enthusiasm for photography, and he listened as Denktash played him excerpts from his record collection of bird song.
He also regularly took tea in Clerides’ drawing room, and more than once spent the day sailing with him on his yacht.
But she says that with Papadopoulos things were very different. He gave de Soto no chance to let him form any kind of personal relationship. Even unscheduled chats were never on the agenda.
Without a text or an agenda in front of him, he was simply not comfortable in his company.
He admitted as much to de Soto himself in their first round of negotiations. “I went over the issues, and I tried to probe him to see where he was coming from. But he was deeply unhappy with this. And he said: ‘What are we doing here, Mr de Soto? Please explain to me what we are doing here. From now on, whenever I have meetings I’d like them to be scheduled in advance and know what the agenda is and know exactly what we will discuss.’”
Martin said Papadopoulos remained an enigma to de Soto. “To this day I still don’t really know what he actually is,” he said.