Efforts to reunite Cyprus are approaching a decisive moment, a top UN official has said, as he urged leaders on both sides to show political courage and warned civil society groups: “It’s now or never.”
In a week marking 60 years since the arrival of a UN peacekeeping force on the eastern Mediterranean island, Colin Stewart, the UN’s special representative in Cyprus, said time was running out to settle the decades-long dispute.
“We have to seize whatever opportunities we have, however small. We don’t know if there is going to be another opportunity,” he told local civil society groups.
“I know how hard you have all worked and how tired you are, but it’s now or never,” he added. “This is the time to put all of your efforts into moving things into a solution.”
In January António Guterres, the UN secretary general, appointed a veteran Colombian diplomat as his personal envoy on Cyprus, a move Stewart, a Canadian, described as a “tremendous opportunity”.
“It doesn’t mean the problem is going to be solved but it means that this is a moment we can make something out of, if we want to,” he said.
Tasked with gauging whether conditions are ripe to resume negotiations, the new envoy, María Ángela Holguín Cuellar, in January met Nikos Christodoulides, president in the island’s internationally recognised south, and Ersin Tatar, the Turkish Cypriot leader in Cyprus’s breakaway north.
Speaking to reporters, Holguín said she hoped her experience facilitating a historic peace accord between the Colombian government and the Farc guerrilla group in 2016 could help resolve the west’s longest running diplomatic dispute.
“I was part of that team that finally reached a peace agreement” in Colombia, Holguín said, after holding talks with Christodoulides. “And I think I can collaborate and do all my best for … a good result for Cyprus.”
Initially established to prevent further fighting between the two communities in the wake of inter-ethnic hostilities in 1964, the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has been continually renewed in the almost half century since a coup aimed at union with Greece prompted Turkey to invade and seize the island’s northern third. The self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus unilaterally declared independence in 1983, although only Ankara has recognised it.
In the absence of a political settlement, the 1,017-strong force, which includes troops and police officers, has remained on the island supervising ceasefire lines and patrolling a buffer zone that bisects Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital. More than 150,000 peacekeepers from 43 countries have served with UNFICYP, making it one of the UN’s longest-running deployments.
“There is no way that we can be proud of the fact that we have been here for 60 years,” said Stewart. “The purpose of a peacekeeping mission is to help solve the problem and then get out. We certainly haven’t finished it.”
In recent years the prospect of peace has grown more elusive.
Under Tatar, a self-avowed nationalist, Turkish Cypriots have hardened their stance, ruling out a peace deal that would result in the island being reunified as a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation.
Instead Tatar espouses a two-state solution. After meeting Holguín, the leader reiterated that the resumption of negotiations would not take place unless Turkish Cypriot sovereignty was first recognised – a condition that has been roundly rejected by the international community. Greek Cypriots, who in contrast to Turkish Cypriots rejected a UN-brokered peace plan in 2004 – shortly before the island acceded to the European Union – argue they will never accept a solution that formalises partition.
But this week Stewart insisted there was a way forward if everyone on the ground, on both sides, had the political courage and win-win attitude to help break the logjam. In a ray of light, there were, he noted, Greek Cypriots who “are pushing” for talks to resume while a moment of rapprochement between historic Nato rivals Greece and Turkey, he said, could not be ignored.
