One, Akrotiri, is in the Greek-Cypriot area, and in practice would be very difficult to operate without Greek-Cypriot cooperation. The other, Dhekelia, borders both north and south.
Into the morass stepped the EU and the UN. The EU made Cyprus an accession state, not least with the expectation that the prize of membership would encourage both sides to agree to a new shared constitution.
UN proposals, led by Kofi Annan, were put to both communities in referendums, in 2004, having been initiated by leaders of both sides. The Turkish Cypriots overwhelmingly endorsed the proposals, but 76 per cent of the Greek Cypriots, whipped up by their president, Tassos Papadopoulos, voted against it.
In all the time that I spent in EU committees and councils, I have never witnessed such outrage as that by the EU foreign ministers who met in late April 2004 to consider the wreckage that Papadopoulos had caused. As a first step, we agreed on a package of measures to ease the isolation of the north. Tragically, many of these were subsequently watered down.
This was because the clock was running down to the formal accession into EU membership of Cyprus (plus Malta and eight Eastern European states) on 1 May – one week later.
Turkish paratroopers land in July 1974, during the invasion of Cyprus (AFP/Getty)
We should have postponed Cyprus’s accession and insisted that it would only go ahead once a power-sharing peace settlement for the whole island was in place. This, after all, was part of the original rationale for making Cyprus an accession state. Our failure (to which I was a party) to do so was one of the greatest regrets of my period as UK foreign secretary.
The consequences of allowing the Greek-Cypriot part of the island into membership, but with the legal nonsense that it covered the whole island, has simply been to give the Greek Cypriots all the cards. They have frequently taken the rest of the EU for a ride.
For long they provided a safe haven for rich Russians’ wealth – until in 2013, many lost money when Cyprus came close to bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by the EU. They had a nice scheme selling EU passports to millionaires.
Above all, they have resisted all sensible schemes for a compromise with the north, driving many negotiators to distraction. The explanation is simple. They calculate, and they are correct, that they are sitting pretty with the status quo. They believe that any settlement with the north would dilute the power that the south currently has.
I have studied this problem for years. There is only one way to unblock the impasse. This is for the EU, and key international partners, including the UK (a “guarantor power” under the independence settlement) to declare that unless the south does, for once, negotiate in good faith, partition of the island will be on the table, and the enforced isolation of the north will end.
Straw, then foreign secretary, meeting with Cypriot foreign minister Georgios Iacovou in 2003 (AFP/Getty)
Three years ago, the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that the EU would “never ever” accept a two-state solution for the island. Why ever not? There are plenty of examples, in Europe and beyond, where partitions are the least-worst solution to continuing conflicts.
Moreover, the possibility of partition is the one thing which could, and likely would, prompt the south to compromise, because if not, they would have an entirely separate, internationally recognised, independent state to their north.
The absurdity of the current situation, which makes Von der Leyen’s 2021 view so risible, is that de facto that’s what we have anyway. Why should innocent people in the north continue to be punished through the inconvenience of international isolation when their negotiators have repeatedly cooperated, only to face obduracy from the south?
I accept that a change in stance would have to be handled with care, not least by the UK, with its much-needed sovereign bases in the south. But the prize, of a settlement, would have many advantages for the long-term future of the south as well as the north, and should now actively be pursued.
Source link : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/cyprus-crisis-two-state-solution-b2582566.html
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Publish date : 2024-07-20 05:00:00
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