Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias reiterated his support for resolving the Cyprus issue during his meeting with the President of the Cypriot House of Representatives, Demetris Syllouris.
‘’You know that it was during my first weeks as Foreign Minister that – emerging from the office of the UN Secretary General, where we discussed, among other things, mainly the Cyprus issue – I was asked by a Turkish journalist why Greece wasn't helping to resolve the Cyprus problem in the same way Turkey wants to see it resolved. And I answered him that Greece wants the Cyprus problem to be resolved more than anyone else, and that if Turkey is really in a hurry, as you say – as we are – the Turkish army should hurry up and leave. That was the first statement I made in an international environment, on my first visit to New York. Since then, I have firmly believed, and I always believed, that those who violate international law – those who use violence outside the UN Charter and the UN resolutions, and those who think they have rights over third countries – should not be vindicated.
"Cyprus is a wound to the heart and soul for us Greeks, because I will never forget the criminal conduct of the Greek junta, for which I always ask forgiveness. Not for what it did, but because we did not succeed in stopping it from opening the way to the invasion, the illegal and violent invasion, the murderous invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces. And I think that the people of my generation, the people of the current government, like the Cypriots, dream of making it part of our lives that we contributed to the resolution of the Cyprus issue in a just manner, through a functional and viable solution, and not of calling something that perpetuates what we want to resolve – the illegal occupation, that is – a solution. I thank you for finding the time for us to talk. It is a twofold pleasure for me to be in Cyprus and at the home of the Republic of Cyprus, so you do me a double honour,’’ added Kotzias.
Kotzias later launched a scathing attack on the handling of the Cyprus issue during an event at the “Archbishop Makarios III Foundation” in Nicosia, which marked the anniversaries of the start of the Greek Revolution on March 25, 1821 and the start of EOKA’s struggle against the British on April 1, 1955.
He referred to the hasty departure of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu from the Swiss capital during the recent negation talks, saying the Turks left because they did not want or could not discuss this issue.
“It was obvious that (…) they were seeking a pretext to break the negotiations on other issues. They now know very well that they cannot convince anyone in the world that they are entitled to have a military presence and the right to intervention in Cyprus. So they chose a win-win option: to raise new, unrelated issues in order to cover the inability or unwillingness to discuss the main issue, or at best to win the ability to control the island with civilian means, so they could compromise on other issues. So this is how we ended up with the demand for the right of "four freedoms" for the Turks,” he said.
At the same time, he continued, “holders of institutional positions in the occupied territory, such as the pseudo-prime minister, talked about plan ‘B’ and the possibility of Turkey annexing occupied Cyprus. Others in the occupied territory spoke of a ‘Gibraltar model’. It is admirable how the otherwise so sensitive international stakeholders and mediators pretend they didn’t hear any of this.”
Kotzias said he wasn’t surprised by Ankara’s position after Geneva. What did surprise him more, he said, was “the behavior of an international mediator who confessed to not having read the decisions of the organization he’s working for in the two years of his handling of the Cyprus issue. What was this mediator doing? Instead of mediating between the two communities, did he declare himself a mediator between Turkey and the EU? Does he have such an authorization and by whom?”
"If Turkey has a request to make to the EU it should go itself and negotiate, but others have no business believing that, on the occasion of the Cyprus issue, they should help meet Turkey’s requirements on its relations with the EU," the minister said.
