BY GUNDUZ AKTAN
RADIKAL- The Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders have accepted UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan for unifying Cyprus before its May 1 entry into the European Union. With the revival of peace negotiations, Turkey has scored a major diplomatic victory.
Following his meetings with Annan in Davos and US President George W. Bush in Washington, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey had accepted the secretary-general’s preconditions for resuming the peace talks. However, the first move made by the Turkish mission chaired by Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Rauf Denktas in Washington was to open Annan’s preconditions up for discussion. Denktas’s delegation prevented most of these preconditions from being added to the text of Feb. 13.
Let’s forget that the text accepts May 1 as a deadline but still puts all federal laws and cooperative agreements onto the table, obviously throwing this timetable into doubt! The most important victory of the Turkish side is that all the points that it opposes in the Annan plan will be discussed one by one. Another important development is that on March 22-29, the Cyprus sides together with Turkey and Greece as guarantor states are set to hold a meeting chaired by Annan in order to re-discuss any points on which they fail to reach an agreement during the peace talks.
Furthermore, Annan cannot ‘fill in any of the blanks’ in his plan without consulting with both Turkey and Greece. If these two guarantor states see their objections being ignored by the UN, then they can refuse to hold a referendum on the plan. According to Annan’s letter of invitation dated Feb. 4, the authority to hold a referendum belongs to the guarantor states, not the UN. The guarantor states will take on a historic responsibility by either accepting or refusing to hold a referendum. That was what Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul underlined when he said the ultimate responsibility on the referendum issue belongs to the Turkish Parliament.