Cyprus president snubs US State Dept Bryza

But no one quite knows why

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza arrives on the island on Sunday on Cyprus problem business but will not be seeing Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos. Nor will he be meeting foreign minister George Lillikas, who has said the visit does not fit into his schedule as will happens to be in Brussels.

The government has given conflicting reasons for the snub. The government spokesman Christodoulos Pashiardis said that it was because Bryza would be meeting Mehmet Ali Talat at the offices he occupies as the president of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Pashiardis said that this was why the President did not meet Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in January.

However, President Papadopoulos then denied this report, saying that this policy did not apply to those who were not members of government.

(Indeed, last week the UN’s UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari met Talat in his offices and also met Papadopoulos).

Foreign Minister George Lillikas gave a third reason saying that Papadopoulos would not be meeting Bryza, namely because he was only a “low-ranking official”. Bryza is number 5 in the US State Department.

Bryza was previously in Ankara and then Athens, where he met the Greek Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yiannis Valinakis.

Bryza expressed satisfaction over the outcome of the recent visit to Cyprus of UN Undersecretary General for political affairs Ibrahim Gambari, adding that the US is happy that the leaders of the two communities in Cyprus agreed to meet regularly, start the work of the technical committees and set up the agenda of the issues of substance.