THE AGREED FRAMEWORK

President Nikos Christodoulides stated yesterday that “our goal is to resume talks from where they left off in Crans-Montana, based on the agreed framework,” adding that “we aren’t discussing anything else”. When asked about the expanded conference in Geneva, the President said he had received a letter from the UN Secretary-General and that “we are preparing to achieve a positive outcome in Geneva”. “We have one goal: to resume talks from where they were interrupted in Crans-Montana based on the agreed framework. We aren’t discussing anything else,” he said.

The President’s position that he’s going to Geneva to achieve a positive outcome with the singular goal of resuming talks from where they left off in Crans-Montana has the support of those in both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities who are anxious about the Cyprus issue and hope for the resumption and completion of talks that were suspended in 2017. Curiously, though, his position also finds agreement among those in the Greek Cypriot (mainly) and Turkish Cypriot communities who are anxious about talks resuming at all. I’m not referring to the cheerleaders in the Greek Cypriot press, but to members of parliament who have even registered discussion topics in parliament to warn their colleagues about “the danger of repeating the talks”.

Some hear the President speaking about an agreed framework and feel relieved. These are people who aren’t particularly well-informed about his actual positions and intentions. Those who obviously know his real positions and intentions hear talk of an agreed framework and simply ignore it. They don’t express themselves, they don’t disagree, they don’t agree, but they’ve never expressed support for the agreed framework. On the contrary, for example, the deputy leader of the coalition government, Nikolas Papadopoulos, had harshly criticised the previous administration whenever the agreed framework was mentioned.

The leader of the Turkish Cypriot opposition, Tufan Erhürman, who rejects Tatar’s position on two states more passionately than we do, challenges Nikos Christodoulides to clarify whether he accepts the political equality as outlined in the agreed framework, but our president dismisses him. Why?

It’s easy for him to speak abstractly about an agreed framework, leaving both supporters of a solution and his rejectionist allies satisfied. But it’s impossible for him to speak about the agreed political equality, which has been resolved “through the principles of rotating presidency and one positive vote,” as Tufan Erhürman repeatedly states. It’s well known, after all,  that when he talks about the agreed framework, he means three of the six points of the Guterres Framework. He wants to renegotiate the other three, and he calls this a “positive outcome”.

This article was originally published on 06.03.2025

Source: THE AGREED FRAMEWORK