Hope fading for UN's peace deal
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, issued an ultimatum to Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders yesterday, warning them that he would withdraw from attempts to broker a deal to reunite the divided island unless they reach agreement in the next 10 days.
In an hour-long meeting in Nicosia with Tassos Papadopoulos, who will be sworn in as Greek Cypriot president today, and Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Annan called a summit in The Hague for March 10.
He said they must submit the UN deal to the Turkish north and Greek south in separate referendums on March 30 or the peace process would collapse.
But hours after both leaders agreed to visit The Hague, Mr Denktash said a new plan would be required, dashing hopes of an 11th-hour deal.
A peace deal would allow a united Cyprus, instead of just the larger Greek-Cypriot part, to sign an accession treaty to join the European Union in April.
Many deadlines have come and gone in the crisis, with recriminations flying recently between the two sides, but all parties now realise there is no more time to wrangle.
A peace deal would allow a united Cyprus, instead of just the larger Greek-Cypriot part, to sign an accession treaty to join the European Union in April.
Many deadlines have come and gone in the crisis, with recriminations flying recently between the two sides, but all parties now realise there is no more time to wrangle.
Battle of hate and hope in a divided island
Sitting with his back to the stiff wind blowing off the front in the idyllic port of Kyrenia in northern Cyprus, Sultan Redif Nusel ordered another Turkish coffee, lit another cigarette and gently offered his opinion of Greek Cypriots living in the south.
"Their attitude has been the same since Byzantine days," he said. "They are like crusaders. They want to have all of the island. And to get it they will kill all of us. All of us."
For Mr Nusel the south - and the Greeks - are distant memories, a decades-old hangover from the childhood he spent growing up there in a mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriot community.
Now 50, he has not seen his birthplace since 1974, when an Athens-backed coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece prompted Turkey to invade from the north.
Then, like many ethnic Turks, he fled alleged Greek brutality, first to the British base at Akrotiri and then to the mainland, from where he was resettled in the enclave the Turkish army had carved out in the north of Cyprus. "My two children have never seen where I was born," he said. "They have never even seen the south of the island."
As Mr Nusel was escaping northwards, Savas Scherkersavvas, a Greek boy growing up in Mr Nusel's adopted home, Kyrenia, was being forced south.
Mr Scherkersavvas fled in the face of the advancing Turkish army, setting up home in the southern coastlands that Mr Nusel had just left. Each man occupies land the other calls home.
"The Turks carried out an ethnic cleansing of the Greek areas in the north," said Mr Scherkersavvas, now in his mid-50s and president of the Kyrenia Refugees' Association. "Even though I haven't seen Kyrenia for nearly 30 years, I will never give it up."
Last year the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, came up with a plan to end the feuding that has split Cyprus and paint over the so-called Green Line dividing north and south. The complex package allowed for two component states, similar to Swiss cantons, linked by a central presidential council. It attracted criticism from both sides, especially over the return of refugees.
But for Cyprus's younger generation, especially on the Turkish side, it offered hope that the island could reunite and the divided communities together join the European Union.
"Older people on both sides are very mistrustful," said Deniz Birnici, 22, who grew up in the north and won a scholarship to Cornell university in America before returning as foreign policy co-ordinator for the mayor of Nicosia's Turkish zone. "But we younger people think there can be a rapprochement."
According to Mehmet Ali Talat, leader of the Republican Turkish Party, which opposes the hardline resistance to the Annan deal of the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, much of the problem is that the state machinery of both sides encourages hatred.
"They pump out misinformation, so that people who have not seen the other community for 30 years get the worst impression," he said. "State schools, state newspapers, state television, all are negative."
Ms Birnici agreed. "I got such a nationalist education here," she said. "Until I was 16 I won all kinds of state prizes for essays and poems about how badly the Greeks had treated us. Now I look back and think, 'What was I doing?' "
This week, as on two previous occasions, Ms Birnici joined a huge rally of Turkish Cypriots calling for Mr Denktash to agree to the UN reunification plan. For many marchers in the impoverished north, the main attraction is the chance of cashing in on EU membership in less than a year.
"The average income in the north is about £1,600 a year," said Ms Birnici. "In the south, it is almost 10 times that." Mr Talat insisted that popular pressure in Turkish Cyprus would force the deal through.
"Denktash's time is over," he said. "He'll sign or he'll resign, because we have to accept this plan. There is no better one." But sitting in their opposite corners of the island, Mr Nusel and Mr Scherkersavvas, whose memories of the wrongs Greeks and Turks did each other three decades ago are still vivid, dismissed any thought of reconciliation.
"We have been invaded and our homes have been stolen," said Mr Scherkersavvas. "The UN plan legitimises the Turkish invasion. So when people say, 'Accept the realities of today', I say we cannot forget the past."
Draining his coffee and stubbing out his cigarette in the beautiful port town of Kyrenia, which symbolises for the Greeks all they have lost to the Turks, Mr Nusel was just as adamant.
"I don't want a solution because I don't trust the Greeks," he said. "People talk about the European Union, but I say money is not everything. Security is more important."
Annan gives last warning to Cyprus
Using unusually blunt language, Mr Annan made the warning as he ended a three-day visit to the region.
Mr Annan announced that the two leaders had agreed to consider holding public plebiscites on the plan before they met him at the Hague on March 10. Cyprus's former president George Vasilliou hailed the "very wise move", saying that if the deal was backed by a popular vote it would be much harder for either leader to reject.
Mr Annan said:"If one party or the other says no [on March 10] there is no doubt that this is the end of the road."
Under the 150-page plan presented by Mr Annan in revised form during the visit to the newly elected president, Tassos Papadopoulos, and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, the two sides would reunite as "constituent states" in a United Cyprus Republic.
The Greek Cypriot population which controls the internationally recognised south, has been invited to join the EU on April 16. But Brussels has said it would prefer the whole island to join.
Mr Annan told the two communities: "As I leave this beautiful island, I pray and hope that you will soon have the settlement so long hoped for and so long denied."