Republic of Cyprus President and leader of the Greek Cypriot community Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat met after a gap of more than two years on Monday, with statements afterwards suggesting that the meeting was a success.
They discussed the issue of missing persons (missing since intercommunal fighting in 1963-64 and the Turkish invasion in 1974) as well as issues regarding the Cyprus problem.
The discussion was held during a meeting of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), on the occasion of the official assumption of duties of the Third Member of the Committee by Christophe Girod.
The meeting lasted about one and a half hours at the residence of the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Cyprus Michael Moller, in the UN-controlled buffer zone, near Nicosia airport.
More money promised and requested
The Republic of Cyprus government announced on Monday that it had made CYP 200,000 available to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help in exhumations and the identification of human remains.
Since September 2005, the government has contributed a total of CYP 400,000.
Both Papadopoulos and Talat appealed yesterday to the international community for “urgent and generous contributions” to help the work of the CMP.
In statements after the meeting, both Papadopoulos and Talat were upbeat.
Papadopoulos said “as you know, today was a meeting for the welcoming of the Third Member of the Committee on Missing Persons. Both Mr. Talat and myself have expressed our great support for the work of the Committee.”
“It is purely a humanitarian issue and there is no room for any political exploitation by any community, so I think it was a good meeting. I hope the Committee will be intensified both in the rate of exhumations as well as to the investigation of the fate of the missing in addition to whatever exhumations may take place,” he added.
Papadopoulos confirmed that they had spoken mostly about the missing but that they had “exchanged a few views on other issues concerning the Cyprus problem.”
Talat also indicated that the meeting had gone well.
“First of all, as expected, we exchanged views on various issues and we decided to give support to the work of the Missing Persons Committee and also for the international community and the EU for raising more funds for the work of the committee. This was the subject of the meeting. So, as I said, we exchanged views on various issues regarding the Cyprus problem also, and it was a very good and sincere discussion.”
When will I see you again?
Gambari has been trying to get a second meeting between the two leaders but it is still uncertain if this will go ahead.
Asked if he would meet Papadopoulos again, Talat said “I hope so. We didn’t decide about it but I hope that it will happen, particularly with the visit of Mr. Gambari and his contacts with us, we may find such an opportunity to come together and go further in future to discuss, to organise such gatherings”.
Papadopoulous, meanwhile, said “there is no dogmatic or other reason for not seeing Mr. Talat as long as there is a programme of what the meeting will come to. As repeatedly stated by us we stand by the arrangement made in Paris for meetings to be set up for discussing substantive issues, core issues of the Cyprus issue as well as other matters and if there is progress on that why not.”
The idea of technical discussions was first raised in February but there are still differences about how far such discussions should go or, indeed, what was exactly agreed with the UN.
Talat said “We are ready to go with the proposal of the UN. As I said, I twice confirmed our readiness with letters to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. We are ready for them”.
Invited to say if he agrees with the agenda for the technical committees, he noted that “it was a proposal from the United Nations and we accepted it, we approved it.”
