Government to try set record straight on Cyprob solution being sought

President Nicos Anastasiades will be releasing to all party leaders an informal document he sent to UNSG Antonio Guterres in September 2017 following the collapse of the Crans-Montana negotiations process, in view of disproving those who continue to question his motives on the Cyprus Problem.

According to government spokesperson Kyriakos Koushios on Monday, the President’s move will come as a response to the comments made by AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou, who said history will remember President Anastasiades as the leader of division.

On Monday, Kyprianou said that “instead of the government apologizing for the damage it has caused on the Cyprus issue, it is attacking those who say that the President of the Republic, for a while, was considering the possibility of a two-state solution."

There are “a few dozen, if not hundreds, of those who privately say that the President of the Republic had confided in them his thoughts on a two-state solution,” Kyprianou said.

“Instead of another response to the secretary general of AKEL Andros Kyprianou, who obviously does not understand the damage he is causing with his repeated unsubstantiated comments, regarding both the solution model the President is seeking and on the efforts he undertook over the past three years in view of resuming negotiations, President Anastasiades decided to send all parliamentary party leaders the informal document he submitted to the UNSG Antonio Guterres on September 22, 2017, two months after the impasse at Crans-Montana, where he clarifies not only the solution model sought by the Greek Cypriot side, but also requests the resumption of negotiations from where they left off in Crans-Montana and on the basis of the SG’s six points,” Koushios said.

The document, Koushios added, is several pages long and contains Anastasiades’ suggestions on how negotiations could resume in a beneficial way.

"Since then, the President of the Republic has strictly followed the exact same line in all his letters to the UN Secretary General, in all the meetings he had with Mr. Guterres, in all the meetings he had with the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for the Cyprus issue, Ms. Jane Hall Lute, a fact that led to agreement between the two leaders before the UN Secretary General, on November 25, 2019, in Berlin, and the issuance of the Joint Declaration of the same day."

Koushios said that "after reading the informal document… we consider that any further criticism and repetition of such unsubstantiated allegations on the issue can only be characterized as malicious and distrustful."