By Bosphorus News Geopolitics Desk
Turkish Cypriot president Tufan Erhürman said on September 26 that United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres told him another 5+1 Cyprus meeting could not be convened without meaningful progress on confidence-building measures, negotiating methodology and substantive issues.
Erhürman spoke live on BRT 1 shortly after meeting Guterres in New York. BRT 1 is the main television channel of Bayrak Radio Television Corporation (BRTK), the Turkish Cypriot public broadcaster.
Erhürman said their meeting concentrated on the confidence-building measures Guterres has been pursuing between the two sides.
"He also said that the 5+1 meeting cannot be convened unless meaningful progress is made on confidence-building measures, methodology and substantive issues," Erhürman said. "We are ready to take the right steps in that sequence."
The discussion returned to seven measures Guterres had raised during his visit to the island. Erhürman listed new crossing points, demining, a joint mechanism for disaster response, cooperation against irregular migration, a civil society coordination body, sports activities and issues affecting children born of mixed marriages.
Erhürman said the Turkish Cypriot side had accepted six of the seven, with crossings the exception.
"We declared that we accepted six of them, meaning all except the crossing points," he said. The options on crossings were "worth working on," he added, but could not be accepted in their current form.
The seven-point package was already disputed before the New York meetings, with the sides giving different accounts of what had been accepted and the crossing-point proposals still unresolved.
Erhürman said no statement had come from the Greek Cypriot side accepting the same six measures. A separate 19-point proposal was then said to have been introduced, he added.
He said the Turkish Cypriot position was to keep work centered on Guterres' seven measures rather than move to a new package with little time left in the secretary-general's term.
Erhürman also accused the Greek Cypriot side of taking steps that eroded confidence while talks on confidence-building measures continued. He cited cancelled festivals, the cancellation of an FC Barcelona event, European arrest warrants and what he described as obstacles to recourse through the Immovable Property Commission (IPC).
The dispute in New York also covered a possible three-way, or 2+1, meeting involving Guterres, Erhürman and Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides.
Erhürman said the Turkish Cypriot side had made no public statement for three days because it did not want to negotiate through the media. He said he decided to respond after repeated claims that he had rejected a 2+1 meeting.
According to Erhürman, Guterres had already told him a week earlier that such a meeting could not take place in New York.
"Today I reminded him that the mistakes made in the past should not be repeated," Erhürman said.
He said a 2+1 meeting could have gone ahead if the preceding discussions had produced a basis for results. Instead, the lengthy meeting showed that the sides had not agreed on any confidence-building measure.
"If there had been a basis for results, a 2+1 meeting could have taken place," he said. "But the long meeting showed that there was no agreement on any measure. Therefore, the possibility of a 2+1 meeting also disappeared."
The rules for moving the Cyprus process forward were already unresolved before this week's contacts. The sequence described after Saturday's meeting remains confidence-building measures first, then methodology and substantive issues before another 5+1.
Erhürman also accused the Greek Cypriot side of approaching members of the UN Security Council in an attempt to prevent Turkish Cypriot representatives from meeting their counterparts in New York.
"The Greek Cypriot side made an attempt at the Security Council to prevent us from meeting our counterparts in New York," he said. Erhürman linked the move to the continuing dispute over political equality.
He said Guterres intended to continue working on the Cyprus issue through the end of his term and had made his expectation of progress on confidence-building measures clear from the start of their September 26 meeting.
Sources: BRT 1 live interview with Tufan Erhürman, Bosphorus News review and reporting.