.
One could argue that this is not a rhetorical question, but to be bluntly frank the establishment in London is naïve as well as biased and our people in Nicosia are simply incapable of doing anything about it. It’s just that in this world of giants and small players, we are expected to behave properly while the U.K. government is not.
The British High Commissioner’s decision to attend the inauguration in the north of a memorial to the Colonial troops who died during the EOKA struggle was a faux pas of gross dimensions that was played down by the Cyprus government for reasons beyond logic.
Surely, President Christofias and his Foreign Minister should have seen this coming, considering that the noisy British expats who live on stolen refugee property in the north far differ in their colonial attitudes from the expats who have chosen to live or retire in the Republic.
Would it not have been better for the High Commissioner to ask the Foreign Office in London to politely ask Ankara to gently remove its guard post from the hilltop above Wayne’s Keep near the old Nicosia airport? That is, after all, where there is a memorial to all the fallen, including those who lost their lives defending the Empire in 1955-59. It just happens to be within the UN-patrolled neutral zone and nobody has access to it, ironically, not even the British, simply because Turkey refuses to withdraw its troops from there.
It is unfortunate that those in government in London continue to ignore the opinion of the vast majority of Britons who want to see a fair solution to the Cyprus problem, where all European citizens will be able to live and move freely. They remain blinded by their military and economic obligations to Turkey and are misguided by the advice of some biased analysts.
Which brings us to the second misguided event of the week and the Nicosia government’s inability to respond.
In an otherwise well-written column by Max Watson that appeared in the Financial Times Cyprus Report on Monday, the Chatham House analyst said, naïvely, that “Economy is key that will unlock barriers.” He seems to have reached a foregone conclusion that Christofias is to blame for the stalemate (and subsequent delay of Turkey’s EU accession) and the solution lies in a unified economy for Cyprus.
Despite having advised the UN team during the run-up to the Annan Plan in all its variants, Watson insists that Turkish Cypriots will be overrun in a prospective solution and seems to have forgotten that the main issue of discontent is that of return and compensation of occupied properties, without which one cannot even discuss issues related to a federal economy.
How naïve, and how stupid of us to let these comments get away.
