The leaders of the two communities in Cyprus, namely President of the Republic Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot Leader Dervis Eroglu, have presented documents on property and territory issues during their meeting on Friday in the context of UN-led direct talks to solve the Cyprus problem.
Speaking to the press following the meeting, the UN Secretary General`s Special Adviser on Cyprus Alexander Downer said that “the leaders met today for three hours and they discussed property and territory.”
Both sides presented documents and they decided that “it would be productive for the representatives to take on the discussion henceforth in relation to these documents in order to ensure not just clarifications but with a view to come into convergences,” he added.
He went on to say that “there was a positive atmosphere today and an encouraging atmosphere“ and that the representatives would on Monday “to take this work forward.”
Downer said that he would be traveling to Greece on Monday to meet with the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Greek government. “So I won’t be here for the representatives` meeting but it’s important for us in the United Nations to keep in touch with the three guarantor powers,” he added.
“I went to Turkey fairly recently and it’s time I went to Greece. The Foreign Minister invited me to go and I look forward to meeting up with him,” he said.
The UN envoy said that next Wednesday he would be discussing the Cyprus issue with the UN Security Council. “I won’t be traveling to New York but I’ll be meeting with them through cyber space video and a telecommunications link up,“ he said.
“We think it is important to keep in constant contact with the Security Council, that members of the Security Council are properly briefed on what is happening at the negotiations and we think this negotiation, while Cyprus-owned and Cyprus-led, has of course very great implications for the broader international community,” he noted.
He added that “after all they are under the auspices of the UN, under the auspices of the Security Council resolutions, so the international community has a great interest in how these negotiations are progressing and it’s an important part of my work to make sure that they are fully briefed.”
Asked about the content of the documents exchanged between the two sides, Downer said that the leaders have been discussing territory and property, adding that there are a lot of issues within the context of territory “which go way beyond just a question of maps and figures.”
“Because obviously if you are going to transfer the boundaries, that is going to have implications for people and all of that has to be thought about and those people that may be affected by any changes in boundaries have to be looked after in consistence with not just law but in a way more importantly just consistent with good, decent human practice. So there has to be thought given to all those sort of things,” he noted.
He said that “when it come to maps and figures both sides have agreed that they will discuss maps and figures at the end or towards the end of the process,“ adding that “they have their own thoughts about these things of course but maps and figures both leaders have agreed to leave at the end of the process”.
Asked whether the issues of property and territory had been discussed together, he said that “certainly today there were aspects of both territory and property that there were discussed in both sides` proposals, so when I say documents these are documents of proposals and certainly there is a discussion about both those things.”
To questions whether the territory experts were present at Friday`s meeting, he said that “the consultants don’t sit in the meetings and just the professional UN people sit in the meetings.”
“The consultants are in the building some time so that we, the UN, can go and consult them or the parties can as well. So we have one of our property consultants here at the moment,” he added.
Downer said that the personal representative of the EU Commission President for Cyprus Jorge Cesar das Neves met with the leaders at the beginning of the meeting.
He said that Jorge Cesar das Neves would meet with Turkish Cypriot politicians as he did with Greek Cypriot ones.
Asked why the leaders finished sooner on Friday, he said that “they felt that they made some good progress at their level and some of the details need to be worked through, further questions asked and answered, details refined by the representatives and, given they have done some successful work on the various proposals, they felt that it was best to be taken forward by the representatives because it is technical work.”
(source: cna)
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