The high-level week of the United Nations General Assembly has always lent itself to diplomatic groundwork, and now and then to significant developments. The theme of this year’s 81st General Assembly is restoring trust, as well as defending and advancing multilateralism. These are “issues and principles that the Republic of Cyprus has protected, defended, promoted and fought for over 52 years”, as the Cypriot side points out.
For Nicosia, the General Assembly week is the big chance to put the Cyprus problem on the table at every level. It is a chance to show the justice of our cause, and to make the case for the kind of moves that could break the long-running deadlock.
We badly want to see that stalemate broken and a result reached through talks. But they should be talks aimed not at rubber-stamping and legitimising the results of the invasion, in other words the occupation, but at overturning the realities the occupation has created.
Tomorrow, September 24, President Nikos Christodoulides meets UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. It is the most important meeting of the week.
And it is a pivotal one, because it comes after Guterres announced there would be no joint meetings and no informal five-party conference on Cyprus. The Secretary-General said a good deal more preparatory work was needed before he could call either. In saying so, he sent signals in several directions. But in our view he should have been more specific.
He should have said plainly who is to blame for the preparations stalling, so that the chance of having everyone involved in New York at the same time was not wasted. We believe treating both sides as equally responsible is wrong, and it does not help the effort.
The Republic of Cyprus keeps putting forward initiatives that help break the deadlock, with ideas and moves designed largely to create the conditions for talks to resume. And what does the occupation side do? It stalls them and “kills” the prospects. There is no shortage of examples.
Even so, we hope, though it’s a long shot, that the contacts in New York will shift the picture and produce some movement.
