Ex-ministers probed
THE South has “torpedoed” any hope of peace talks, it was claimed as the war of words over Greek Cypriot attempts to search for offshore gas and oil raged on this week.
Less than 48 hours after UN Special Representative in Cyprus Elizabeth Spehar underlined, following a meeting President Mustafa Akıncı, that the UN’s good offices mission “always remains available”, Prime Minister Tufan Erhürman accused Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades of scuppering any return to the negotating table.
At a routine weekly meeting with Mr Akıncı on Thursday, he blasted Mr Anastasiades’s latest salvos as “not at all constructive”.
Mr Anastasiades and the South’s government spokesman, Nicos Christodoulides, had gone on the attack on Wednesday following demands by two TRNC government ministers — both former peace negotiators — that hydrocarbons explorations should involve Turkish Cypriots or be shelved.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kudret Özersay’s team raised “high concern” over the EU’s approach to the crisis, saying in a scathing statement: “The EU . . . ignoring the will of the Turkish Cypriots; disregarding the Turkish Cypriot authorities despite the acknowledgment by all that these resources also belong to the Turkish Cypriots; omitting to mention the rights of the Turkish Cypriot people; and not even uttering their name, constitutes nothing but the continuation of [the bloc’s] ever-recurring, inaccurate approach and is a repetition of the same old mistake.”
Dr Özersay also said the Turkish side should continue to act in a “deterrent manner” — days after after Turkish warships forced an Italian drillship to withdraw from a planned exploration site in waters claimed by the Greek Cypriots as their exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Earlier, Economy and Energy Minister Özdil Nami had called for the drilling efforts to be suspended immediately to “prevent the cumulation of tension and conflict”, saying the current crisis was the result of Greek Cypriot “refusal to accept many offers of working together”.
Mr Christodoulides hit back on Wednesday, claiming Turkish Cypriots were “merely using hydrocarbons as an excuse . . . not to return to the negotiating table”.
“The Turkish Cypriots must decide what future they want, with Turkey or with a reunited Cyprus as an EU member state. We need to be very careful not to create the impression that the issue of gas is the reason why the talks do not resume,” he said.
Mr Anastasiades weighed in with a written statement calling on the Turkish side to return to the negotiating table “provided they end the violation of the [Greek Cypriotrun] republic’s sovereign rights inside its [EEZ]”.
He said the Turkish side’s arguments were “neither justified nor based on facts”, and vowed: “The Republic of Cyprus’s energy planning will continue.”
On Monday Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım warned those “trying to conspire in the Aegean and in the Mediterranean” that Turkey and its Navy “have the power to deal with every type of threat — noone had better miscalculate this”.
PRO-Greek British MPs have urged the UK government to condemn Turkey over the hydrocarbons stand-off.
Greek Cypriot-origin Bambos Charalambous, of Enfield Southgate, wrote expressing his views to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, while Theresa Villiers, of Chipping Barnet, told 400 members of the UK’s Greek Cypriot community at a meeting there was “no justification for Turkey to use ‘gunboat diplomacy’”.