Thanasis Photiou
The story of Nikos Christodoulides and his 19 proposals reminded me of another episode from years ago. Back then, Nikos Anastasiades “discovered” that a United Nations document existed, even though he supposedly had no idea he had received it. It was May 2013, and according to the government’s initial response, our side had requested the document on convergences prepared by Alexander Downer on May 16, immediately after learning from public statements by the Turkish Cypriot side that it had been in their possession for two weeks.
What followed was a farce. For a few more days, we played a game of cat and mouse, with everyone pretending to search for something that could not be found. Meanwhile, the daily press was full of theories about hidden agendas involving Alexander Downer, the UN secretary general's then special adviser on Cyprus. Finally, Downer let the cat out of the bag in full view of the public, on the steps of the Presidential Palace, where he had been summoned by a supposedly angry Nikos Anastasiades. The document, Downer said, had been delivered to both sides on April 30. In other words, 16 days before President Anastasiades “discovered” it existed and asked to see it.
A series of explanations followed, but instead of restoring the credibility of the Presidential Palace, they damaged it even further. We were told that the document had been received by the President's diplomatic office but was not considered important enough to bring to his attention. And so, for 16 days, someone had supposedly kept a document “hidden” from the President, when in reality it was the President himself who had kept it “hidden” from the political leadership because he did not want to give himself another headache at that particular moment.
Thirteen years later, we have a somewhat different version of the same story. Back then, there was a document the President did not know he had. Today, there are 19 proposals that the President insists exist, but which he never submitted in writing. Nobody has seen them. Someone may have heard them, but even that person apparently failed to make sense of all 19. But let us take things from the beginning.
Nicosia was preparing for Christodoulides' trip to New York by raising expectations of renewed momentum on the Cyprus problem, even at the last minute, with the process seemingly heading for failure. The President was seeking a trilateral meeting with Antonio Guterres and Tufan Erhurman. According to what we were being told, he had 19 proposals covering the substance of the Cyprus problem, the methodology for negotiations and confidence building measures. It was supposedly a coherent package of initiatives that could give the process fresh momentum.
The trilateral meeting never happened. The Turkish Cypriot side refused to take part. Later, when Erhurman was asked about the 19 proposals, he said he had not received a single document. He had heard oral suggestions, but when he tried to count them, he could not even get to 19. Christodoulides responded that he had never claimed to have submitted the proposals in writing. He explained that he had deliberately avoided doing so to prevent leaks.
There is no reason to question the word of the President of the Republic. The proposals exist, there are 19 of them, and confidentiality requires that they remain unwritten. After all, verbal proposals are hardly unusual in diplomacy. But that is not the point. What exactly did this much publicized initiative achieve?
Erhurman claimed that when he asked Maria Angela Holguin about the 19 proposals, she told him she had no new information. We do not know whether the conversation happened exactly as he described it. Holguin has not publicly confirmed his account, but neither has she denied it. Still, if Nicosia was presenting these proposals as an initiative capable of generating momentum, are we not entitled to ask how the United Nations actually used them? What new information did they give the secretary general? And how could they have helped bring about the trilateral meeting if they were never presented in a way that allowed the UN to use them for that specific diplomatic purpose?
We can assume that Antonio Guterres, who at Crans Montana had a verbal assurance from Cavusoglu and was pressing for an agreement, would have had no problem using a verbal assurance from the President of the Republic if he believed it could unlock the process. Would that not be the logical thing to do?
Of course, Erhurman's refusal to take part in the trilateral meeting is his responsibility. Turkish demands also remain the main obstacle to efforts to resume negotiations. But since when has Turkish intransigence excused our own side from the responsibility to conduct serious and effective diplomacy?
The President says two proposals have already been accepted and that responses to others are still pending. That is positive, provided these initiatives deliver results. But proposals on the environment and cultural heritage do not, by themselves, amount to progress on the substance of the Cyprus problem. Nor do they prove that the conditions for resuming negotiations are in place.
And so, instead of discussing how to break the deadlock, we are debating whether the proposals were written or verbal, how many there actually were and who knew about them. It is just like 2013, when instead of discussing the points of agreement, we were trying to establish whether the President knew what was sitting in his own office.
Nikos Christodoulides was foreign minister. He knows that in diplomacy, the number of proposals matters far less than their ability to change the situation. He also knows that a political initiative has no value simply because it is announced. Its value lies in what it achieves.
The Cyprus problem does not need more public relations exercises designed to create the impression that something is happening. It needs strategy, seriousness and concrete diplomatic action. The goal is not to convince the public that the President is making moves. The goal is to finally get the Cyprus problem moving.
Unfortunately, those are two very different things.
