The President of the Republic received Mr A. Downer
The President of the Republic Mr Demetris Christofias received today, at the Presidential Palace, the UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus Mr Alexander Downer.
After the meeting Mr Downer told the press that he had a nice meeting with President Christofias with whom he discussed the process of the negotiations on the Cyprus issue in view also of tomorrow’s meeting between the leaders of the two communities.
Mr Downer added that yesterday he met in Ankara with the Turkish Foreign Minister Mr Davutoglou to whom he “emphasized that the UN wants to see a real progress in these negotiations. I talked to him particularly about the property chapter, that this was what the leaders were now discussing. I thought the two leaders were wise to talk about this issue, it’s a very important issue and we wanted to see real progress and a real spirit of compromise in these negotiations over the property question. It is a crucially important issue. We had good talks about that.”
Asked how important it is to have a result in the negotiations by the end of this year, Mr Downer said “the important thing is to have momentum in the negotiations. Obviously momentum has slowed because there were ‘elections’ in the north and there’s been a change in the leadership of the Turkish Cypriots. I am not saying this critically, that is just a natural state of affairs and that is what has happened, but we hope momentum will get back into these negotiations over the next few weeks as the leaders focus on the property question.”
Replying to another question, Mr Downer said the UN “laboriously do our job, it’s a difficult job, it’s a difficult situation here. We have always explained we weren’t in favour of arbitration, I know that some people say we are in favour of organizing an international conference or something. I don’t know why they think that. We have not been promoting an international conference. Our view has always been steadfast: this process needs real momentum. There have been good results achieved in the governance and power sharing chapter and particularly during the intensive phase of the negotiation early this year. What we really want to see is progress now on the property question. That will require compromise on both sides.”
To a question on whether the UN will consider the nature of its involvement in the talks in case there is no settlement or official progress by the end of the year, the UN official replied: “We have said all along that we want to see momentum in this process. It has been announced some weeks ago that the UN Secretary General is going to produce another report. He just produced a report for the good offices and he is going to produce another report in November, and we hope that that will be a glittering report all around and there will be very positive things to say about the way the process is going.”
Answering another question he said “the UN has never laid down a deadline. We said that we will produce another report in November and that report will be a factual report on what’s happened in the negotiations as the previous reports have been.”
Asked whether the Secretary General will invite the two leaders in New York next September, Mr Downer said “I don’t think there is any plan to do that. As you know Mr Eroglou will see the Secretary General, Mr Christofias has met the Secretary General on many occasions and knows him well including having hosted his visit. There has been no plan whatsoever for a joint meeting of Mr Christofias and Mr Eroglou, no plan at all.”
