Cyprus Mail: “National Council has outlived any sort of usefulness”
3 February, 2016The restoration works of the Gamblers’ Inn will be completed at the end of February
4 February, 2016Greek Cypriot daily Cyprus Mail newspaper mentioned that the Greek Cypriot Government spokesperson urged the two media outlets which published the document hours after it was distributed to parties who had promised not to leak it, to say where it came from.
According to the news, a copy of the document which was given to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last month, was distributed to the party leaders after they complained for the numerous time that Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiades was keeping them in dark on the talks. During the meeting Anastasiades said that he was ready to circulate documents on the negotiations to them ahead of a closed- doors briefing of parliament on February 11, on condition they would not leak the information. Within a few hours the document had been leaked to Sigmalive and Philenews. The leaked prompted Anastasiades to reconsider his decision and the way he briefed the parties. “It is something that concerns Anastastasiades. In the next few days he will decide how the national council will function in general, and the matter of documents,” the Greek Cypriot spokesperson said. Christodoulides also said that Anastasiades was considering having individual meetings with the parties though nothing had been finalised.
On the other hand DIKO accused Anastasiades’ Office of leaking the document. The party said, “It was obvious that the document was leaked by the Presidential Palace because Anastasiades wanted an excuse not to give parties the negotiation documents.” “From the moment Anastasiades was forced, under pressure from DIKO, to brief the parties with documents, we doubted the sincerity of his intentions” the party said.
Furthermore, EDEK chairman Marinos Sizopoulos also suggested it was the job of Anastasiades’ Office. Sizopoulos said that the document did not come from his party and a lot of fuss was made for a paper that essentially was nothing special.
AKEL said that it was an unacceptable phenomenon that not only undermined the National Council but the procedure to resolve the Cyprus problem. Party spokesperson Giorgos Loukaides said, “AKEL was in favour of having transparency and informed parties and society. At the same time though, it should not be done in a way that undermined the efforts to resolve the problem and the Greek Cypriot side in general.”