Cyprus Mail 21 August 2023 - by Tom Cleaver
The UN’s special representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart is set to hold a meeting with the north’s ‘foreign minister’ Tahsin Ertugruloglu on Monday regarding the construction of a road between Pyla and Arsos, according to the Cyprus News Agency (CNA).
CNA said the aim of the meeting is to “normalise” the situation in the area, and that this meeting may be the first of a number of such meetings on the matter to take place in the coming days.
According to Turkish Cypriot newspaper Yeni Duzen, today’s contacts between the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus (Unficyp) and the Turkish Cypriot side on the road it is attempting to construct in the buffer zone have been described as “the last chance for diplomacy”.
However, Unficyp spokesman Aleem Siddique moved to make reassurances that diplomatic channels had not been exhausted, telling the Cyprus Mail “we are engaging with the Turkish Cypriot side every day.
“We will be discussing the incident which took place in Pyla last week, and working on finding a way forward which is mutually acceptable to all parties. These discussions take place at every level, on a daily basis, and on a whole raft of issues,” he said.
The UN Security Council is set to hold a closed meeting on Monday night to discuss the matter.
Speaking about the Security Council’s meeting, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said “we expect the UN to respond to the terms of its mandate. At this time, very fine and specific management [of the matter] is required”.
Russia is the only nation of the Security Council’s five permanent members not to have issued a condemnation of Friday’s incident and blocked a move on Sunday to issue a joint statement on the matter, with its diplomats saying they were awaiting instructions from Moscow.
Asked why Russia has not yet made a statement on the matter, government deputy spokesperson Doxa Komodromou said “we will not speculate as to the motivations of other nations’ positions on the issue”.
The Greek Cypriot mukhtar of Pyla Simos Mytidis also spoke on the issue on Monday afternoon, telling CNA the village’s residents “are worried and feel insecure and complain about the situation”.
He added that relations between the village’s Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot residents had been frayed by the issue, saying “in the cafes where they used to sit at the same table and talk, now each side is sitting alone”.
He confirmed that some work on the section of the road which is located in the north and outside the buffer zone had been carried out on Sunday, but that today no large machinery is working on any part of the road.
“I think they are waiting for instructions from Ankara on how to proceed or whether to proceed,” he said.
Greece’s government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis also made a fresh statement on the matter on Monday, saying “Greece is in full coordination with the Republic of Cyprus and will take all appropriate actions”.
He called the attempt to construct the road “a flagrant violation of the status quo, while the attack on members of Unficyp constitutes an act of contempt for international law”.
Earlier on Monday morning, Aleem Siddique had told CNA there was “no change” on the construction site.
The situation in the area had remained “calm” throughout the weekend after an eruption of violence on Friday saw UN soldiers injured with one being punched in the face and multiple vehicles rendered undriveable as the UN attempted to block access to the buffer zone to stop road construction.
The incident received widespread global condemnation, including from UN Secretary general Antonio Guterres, the president of the European Council Charles Michel, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell, the British High Commission, the French embassy and the US embassy in Cyprus, but the Turkish Cypriot side has reiterated its determination to construct the road.
