Talks resume on plan to reunite Cyprus

CYPRUS: If Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators agree to reunite Cyprus under the UN plan and it is approved in referendums on April 22nd, a Unified Cyprus Republic will be proclaimed simultaneously in Nicosia and at UN headquarters in New York before Cyprus enters the European Union on May 1st. Michael Jansen reports from Nicosia.

The new independent state will bind two equal cantons in an "indissoluble partnership" under single sovereignty. This state will be in place on day one because the UN "Foundation Agreement" will provide for a transitional administration and a full set of agreed laws.

Instead of two governments working at cross-purposes, Cyprus will, in theory, have three working in concert. The federal government will consist of an executive, legislature and judiciary. A presidential council will be made up of four Greek and two Turkish Cypriots with the offices of president and vice-president, held by figures from different communities rotating every 10 months.

The bicameral legislature will comprise a senate of 24 members from each community and a 48-member chamber of deputies where the 80 per cent Greek Cypriot majority will hold 36 seats and the Turkish Cypriots 12. The federal government will deal with external relations, state finances, national citizenship, communications, aviation, natural resources and antiquities.

The cantons, which will have separate (ethnic) internal citizenship, will set up their own executives, parliaments, administrations, judiciaries and police forces and will exercise authority over education, health, labour and social security, and family, company and criminal law. Within 40 days, the two communities will elect cantonal assemblies which will send 24 of their members to a unicameral federal parliament. They will be replaced after 10 months by the elected bicameral legislature. Once their term is expired, the co-presidents will be replaced by the presidential council.

The Green Line, which has divided Cyprus since the constitutional crisis of 1964, will be erased by bringing down walls, removing barbed wire and clearing minefields.

The internal map of Cyprus will be modified: the Turkish Cypriot canton will shrink from 36 per cent to 28-29 per cent, restoring 50 villages and towns to Greek Cypriot rule and enabling half of the 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees to reclaim their property. An estimated 47,000 residents of the Turkish Cypriot area will be relocated.

Citizenship will be restricted so that large numbers of mainland Greeks and Turks cannot settle. Each side will be permitted to submit a list of 45,000 for approval. This provision will legitimise that number of mainland Turkish settlers who reside in the north. Others could be offered compensation and repatriated to the mainland.

Freedom of movement, conceded by the Turkish side last April, will continue but citizenship, residency, property and investment rights of citizens of one canton in the other will be limited and granted by stages. This means the communal division of the island will be perpetuated as long as the two sides wish to retain ethnic cantons.

The Greek Cypriots have been working since 1970 for EU membership. But the Turkish Cypriots will have to transform their canton to meet the EU's political, economic, financial and human rights requirements. The EU has budgeted €300 million for Cyprus, of which €250 million will be for reorganising the Turkish Cypriot canton.

Turkish Cypriot isolation will end. The international embargo, imposed when the Turkish army occupied the north in 1974, will be lifted. Tourism could become the major money spinner as it is in the Greek Cypriot south. The withdrawal of all but 6,000 of Turkey's 40,000 troops will free up a great deal of prime land now being used by the military.

With strong encouragement from the US and the EU, the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who favours the plan, has taken on the Turkish generals and political establishment who reject reunification. If he succeeds in forcing the army to abandon Cyprus, Mr Erdogan could compel the generals to relinquish their central role on the political stage, institutionalised in the National Security Council.

Reunification negotiations may have begun but the deal has not yet been made. The latest Greek Cypriot poll is not propitious: the plan was rejected by 61 per cent and accepted by only 27 per cent. Time is short for convincing opponents that it is the best option. If the effort fails, Cyprus could be doomed to division.