ANKARA - Turkey is expecting concrete developments from the European Union (EU) summit which will be held in Brussels between March 25 and 26 on making an agreement to be reached in Cyprus primary law of EU, diplomatic sources said on Monday.
Diplomatic sources said that Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ugur Ziyal stressed the importance of the issue during his meeting with the United Nations (U.N.) Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy to Cyprus Alvaro de Soto and added that if this problem was not solved, an agreement would not emerge.
Noting that the solution of this issue was mostly expected from the EU and it was necessary to solve it before Annan was involved in the issue, the sources said that EU officials should solve the issue during the summit in Brussels.
Describing derogations as a ''vital issue'', sources said that De Soto also considered that the problem should be solved for the continuation of Annan Plan and the United Nations was also carrying on meetings on that issue, however it was the EU which would solve the problem.
Sources said that a detailed and long meeting was held with De Soto at Foreign Ministry and they added that besides derogations issue, sides took up sine qua nons of Turkish side such as bizonality and guarantor rights and all issues about Cyprus question and also the situation was revised prior to quartet meeting which will be held in Switzerland.
If the principle of bizonality is to be effective in Cyprus within the EU, a permanent derogation on freedom of movement and settlement in Cyprus would have to be part of EU law, and it will need to exclude mainland Greeks as well as Greek Cypriots, the Turkish side insists, noting that it will have to be for the two peoples themselves, not the EU by some arbitrary time limit or pre-arranged mechanism, to decide when that derogation is no longer needed.
(GC-AÖ) 22.03.2004