Good progress on the issue of the judiciary has been made in today’s meeting between Cyprus President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, in the framework of direct negotiations, held since early September under UN auspices.
UN Secretary General's Special Adviser on Cyprus Alexander Downer, speaking to reporters after the eighth meeting of the leaders in the UN controlled buffer zone, said the leaders will meet again on Monday to discuss deadlock resolving mechanisms.
Downer stressed the importance of maintaining momentum, noting the discussions will continue into 2009.
In his remarks about the result of today’s meeting, Downer said the discussion was predominantly about the judiciary “and they made good progress on the issue of the judiciary”.
In the meantime, he added, “the representatives and officials will be meeting here tomorrow morning for further discussions about a range of different issues that the leaders had referred to them”.
Asked on the process and the chapters that are under discussion and how they will progress, Downer said that they have been going through the process of governance and “have got a long way through that”.
The best way to describe the process, he said, “is the three baskets of approach, that there is agreement reached, where there is convergence, if you like, that is in the first basket, where there is some disagreement and that short term prospects for negotiating – particularly through meetings of the representatives – an agreement, we call that the second basket and the third basket areas where there remain significant disagreements and some of that will be discussed at a later stage in the whole negotiating process”.
So, Downer added, “they are working through the governance, power sharing chapter and identifying issues in the way that I have described”.
However he said that some issues will come back much later in the negotiations, even though they will move on as time goes on, “they will move on to the next chapter which is the property chapter”.
Asked when that will happen, Downer said “we will see. There is no particular time laid down for that, but they made progress today on the judiciary and they are moving on Monday to discussing deadlock resolving mechanisms and I think you could hope that they will get to property before too long”.
To a question if there are plans to intensify the frequency of the leaders’ meetings perhaps twice a week, Downer replied “no, I think the process is working quite well now, it’ s working a lot better than it did initially, I think it is working quite well, of course there have been two meetings this week and there will be a meeting again on Monday, so we are going through a period of quite a lot of meetings but the meetings of the leaders, as envisaged, they will be more or less on a weekly basis, depending a bit on scheduling.”
Asked if there is a possibility for a solution to be reached before the Elections in the Europarliament, Downer replied “I wouldn’t put a time on it. I think the important thing is that they maintain momentum. Obviously there will be easier issues and more difficult issues so the momentum won’t be straight line momentum but never the less they need to maintain momentum and not lose momentum. I think to set themselves artificial deadlines will make the process more difficult than easier”.
He said the “word I really want to stress here is momentum and the need to maintain the momentum through the process and I think there is momentum”.
Asked how momentum can be sustained through 2009, Downer replied “I think that is a question of the political will of the leaders. The impression I have of the leaders, I have spent some time with them, and now I have come to know them, and they are people who do have the political will to find a solution and I keep saying this”.
Downer said he has been “involved in quite a lot of disputes and astute resolutions over the years and this is by any standards, a difficult problem, obviously it’s a longstanding problem, it has many different facades and I wouldn’t expect it to be solved overnight. If this could have been solved quickly, it would have been solved long ago, obviously. So it will take time and I think that obviously the process will go into 2009 but as long as the momentum is sustained, they can achieve a good solution in the end”, he concluded.
Christofias and Talat have been meeting since early September to find a mutually agreed solution that will reunite Cyprus, divided since the 1974 Turkish invasion.
