UN SPECIAL Adviser Espen Barth Eide was doing so well. He announced on Tuesday that Cyprus talks would be resuming after the elections in the north, which will be held on April 19.<\/p>\n
A day later he found himself in the doghouse, not only with the usual suspects \u2013 the rejectionist parties \u2013 but with the government after an interview he gave to the Cyprus News Agency.<\/p>\n
Two comments he made raised hackles. In one, he tried to play down Turkey\u2019s forays into the island\u2019s EEZ effectively saying it was no big deal.<\/p>\n
His second \u2018offence\u2019 was when he tried to define the Cyprus problem, saying: \u201cIt`s essentially contested what is the Cyprus problem. Is it a hijack state, or part of the country is occupied?\u201d<\/p>\n
The government immediately made strong demarches, and the political parties trotted out the usual song and dance they perform when a foreign official doesn\u2019t follow the Greek Cypriot party line.<\/p>\n
At the time of writing yesterday afternoon we had lauded Eide for his sensible straight talking, saying that it was refreshing to see a UN interlocutor not afraid to be scrutinised over what he said in the hard-core Greek Cypriot media, which routinely eats UN envoys for breakfast.<\/p>\n
The UN had not issued any \u2018clarifications\u2019 or statements that Eide had been \u2018misunderstood\u2019 or tried to smooth things over for the good of the negotiations, which indicated that he was ready to stand by what he said and not be cowed.<\/p>\n
This viewpoint was short-lived. Late last night Eide issued a statement saying he had been \u2018misrepresented\u2019. Interestingly he did not say he had been misquoted but merely tried to clarify that he had not intended to make any kind of judgment about the competing narratives on the Cyprus issue, and also that Cyprus\u2019 EEZ should be respected by other states.<\/p>\n
With all the past experiences of his predecessors it is hard to believe Eide did not know that everything he said would be nitpicked to death, even though he did not say anything that was terribly shocking.<\/p>\n
Straight talking is all very well if your audience is ready to listen and understand what you are trying to do. But in Cyprus, neither side wants to hear the other\u2019s point of view. That\u2019s why the Cyprus issue has not been resolved.<\/p>\n
In their own ways, the sides in Cyprus \u2018can\u2019t handle the truth\u2019 and anyone who speaks it is labeled \u2018an ambassador for Turkey\u2019 by the Greek Cypriot side or \u2018pro-Greek by the Turkish side.<\/p>\n
The unfortunate reality is that for the sake of the negotiations it is sometimes best not to give more ammunition to the political parties who are just looking for an excuse to pressure President Nicos Anastasiades into not returning to the talks. (Cyprus Mail, 9 April 2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UN SPECIAL Adviser Espen Barth Eide was doing so well. He announced on Tuesday that Cyprus [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pio.mfa.gov.ct.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}