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Foreign Office (FCDO) minister Stephen Doughty is being urged not to waste time with talks to end more than 50 years of division on the island of Cyprus unless Sir Keir Starmer is prepared to change decades of British policy.
Mr Doughty will land on the strategically crucial Mediterranean island on Friday where the UK owns two military bases that are vitally important for security within easy reach of the Middle East.
The minister will meet the recognised government of Cyprus in the Greek Cypriot controlled south and then hold a first meeting of Sir Keir’s government with the president of the unrecognised breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) Ersin Tatar.
It comes ahead of the latest UN talks in Geneva scheduled for 17 and 18 March where, as the former colonial power and one of the guarantor powers for the island, the UK will take part.
Mr Tatar was angered late last year when Sir Keir visited the island but only met with Greek Cypriot representatives. The last UK minister to meet him was Conservative foreign secretary Dominic Raab in February 2021.
The meetings come as TRNC’s foreign minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu is in London meeting with British MPs, warning that the talks in Geneva involving the UK are “a waste of time”.
Mr Ertuğruloğlu spoke to The Independent ahead of the announcement that Mr Doughty will be in Nicosia claiming that the ongoing discrimination against Turkish Cypriots since the division of the island in 1974 means that the upcoming talks are pointless.
He blamed the UK government as “the pen holder for Cyprus” in the UN security council for allowing the Greek Cypriot south to be recognised as the official state and the TRNC to remain isolated.
Cyprus is a former British colony and the agreement for independence in 1960 was meant to respect both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities.
This initially fell apart in 1963 when the bicommunal government collapsed in what became known as “the bloody Christmas” after intercommunal violence.
Then in 1974 Turkish army occupied the north of the island to protect Turkish Cypriots after a military coup saw an attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece in a failed process known as enosis.
Turkey has maintained military bases ever since and while the Greek Cypriots describe it as an “illegal occupation”, Mr Ertuğruloğlu said they act as “a deterrent” preventing further communal violence.
He suggested that the peace of the last 60 years would have been replaced by similar problems to Gaza had it not been for the presence of Turkish troops.
The UK, Republic of Cyprus and the United Nations all will be looking for a federal solution to reunify the island, but Mr Ertuğruloğlu said that the TRNC will no longer agree to that. Instead they are pressing for a two state solution.
A federal solution was agreed in a referendum in the TRNC under the Annan Plan in 2004 but rejected in the Republic of Cyprus. Despite this Cyprus was given membership of the EU.
An attempt to revive it at Crans Montana in 2017 then also failed.
Mr Ertuğruloğlu said: “The UN talks in Geneva are a waste of time and energy. The Greek Cypriot intention is to continue to pretend to be talking federation when they have absolutely no interest in one.
“They say, ‘let’s pick up from where we left off in Crans Montana.’ And that’s where we say, ‘No way that’s finished.’
“Crans Montana was the last attempt at federation, and since that collapsed, as all the other attempts collapsed over the past 60 years, from now on, there will not be negotiations unless the two sides’ statuses are made equal.
“In other words, no more negotiations if the Greek Cypriots are treated as the state and the Turkish Cypriots are just treated as a community.”
He went on: “The discrepancy in statuses has been the one reason why 60 years of negotiations went down the drain. So that’s why we keep saying there is no sense in doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results so no more federation talks, as long as the statuses are not level.”
He said that UN secretary general António Guterres needed to go back to the security council “to start again” and change the status. But he added: “It won’t happen.”
The outlook for the talks is not shared at the Cypriot High Commission in London.
Deputy high commissioner Spyros Miltiades told The Independent: “President Christodoulides has made it clear that our sole aim and expectation from the Geneva meeting is to create the necessary conditions to return to the negotiating table and continue from where we were left in Crans Montana in 2017.
“The only framework of negotiations that the Republic of Cyprus and the rest of the international community accept, is the UN agreed framework of Bizonal Bicommunal Federation.
“We hope that all parties concerned will attend the meeting in goodwill and ready to engage in a meaningful dialogue within this framework that will bring us closer to the island’s reunification. After all these decades of on-going UN-led rounds of negotiations, we have reached convergences in most aspects of the Cyprus issue that could make a settlement reachable.”
He added: “It is regrettable that the Turkish Cypriot side goes to the meeting with the position that is a waste of time. This is disrespectful to the UN secretary general and all other parties that abide to international law and support the agreed framework, including the UK.”
An FCDO source said: “The UK actively engages all parties to support the UN-led process on Cyprus and to encourage the flexibility needed to return to talks.”
Source: independent.co.uk
