CYPRUS / TURKEY: The Turkish government has been accused of taking a "negative" attitude to the latest peace moves on Cyprus. Speaking on a visit to Dublin, Cypriot foreign minister George Iacovou expressed concern about the Turkish response to a recent meeting in Paris between President Papadopoulos, leader of the Greek Cypriots, and the UN's Kofi Annan.
"Generally speaking, the Turks, I would say, they were negative," he said, adding that the Turkish reaction came indirectly. "The Turks work in peculiar ways: they have not made statements, but there have been quite a lot of leaks in the Turkish press as to how they feel." Commenting on the outcome of the February 28th talks with Mr Annan, he said: "We came away from the Paris meeting very encouraged about the future." But his government was "surprised" at the lack of any official Turkish reaction since.
In a referendum almost two years ago, the "Annan Plan" for the reunification of Cyprus was approved by a majority of Turkish Cypriots, but 76 per cent of Greek Cypriots rejected it. Cyprus has been divided into Greek and Turkish zones since 1974 when, in response to the overthrow of the government of President Makarios, Turkey invaded and occupied over 30 per cent of the island and displaced about 200,000 Greek Cypriots.
However, Mr Iacovou points out that the political leaders of the Greek Cypriots stressed after the referendum that it was "a rejection of a specific plan with specific characteristics, not a rejection of the solution and particularly not a rejection of what had been agreed in the past, that a solution would be federal, whether we call it a bi-zonal or bi-communal federation. So the basic principles were reaffirmed immediately afterwards and we never stopped trying to resume a process."
One of the issues raised by the Greek Cypriots at the recent Paris meeting was the economic arrangements for any proposed new federation. Mr Iacovou says that the "Annan Plan" of 2004, "in effect recognised the capacity for the two constituent states to go opposite ways and the federation to pay for the consequences".
Another issue discussed in Paris was a possible census of the Turkish settler population in Northern Cyprus. "Turkey, after the invasion, brought into the island a large number of settlers," he says. "We say there are 115,000. Turkey never quite says, but it implies that the numbers are a lot less."
Mr Iacovou's government would like a census to be carried out, to build up a profile of the Turkish settler community. His government also wants to "take stock of what has happened to Greek Cypriot property in occupied Cyprus". This would be with a view to arriving at a compensation figure that would be "realistic and mutually-agreed". The Paris meeting agreed on proposals for confidence-building measures aimed at reducing military tension on the island.