Letters On Cyprus Issue  

Letter written by Rainer Schwartz – Berlin to the European Voice” issue dated 24-31 January 2002

CYPRUS REALITIES

The highly interesting informative debate on Cyprus in European Voice among your readers convinced me and my wife that it would be a good idea to have our winter vacation in Cyprus rather than the Canary Islands and try to see the place with our own eyes.

While it rained every day and even snowed, I had a chance to talk to a cross-section of local people on many issues concerning the Cyprus problem and read their newspapers. I would like to share what I learned with you.

After a week of contacts in local restaurants and coffee shops, I realised that the southern Greek Cypriots are not actually ready to establish a new partnership with the Turkish Cypriots as their equal partner. Many southerns tried to prevent me visiting the north with all sorts of unbelievable stories.

It seems to me unimaginable that these people can live together again if they really have these kinds of feelings as they explained to us. Therefore, I believe this enlargement process must be debated extensively and we must be extremely careful as to what kind of a country we will be admitting into our EU family.

In fact one of the Greek Cypriot papers’ columnists, Loucas G. Charalambous, claimed that accession talks were only progressing “thanks to the efforts of Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis who – without help from anyone – has managed in the space of few years to carry the Greek Cypriots to the main doors of the European Union”.

To achieve this, Simitis not only had to take on Turkey, but he also “had to contend with the Greek Cypriots, whose immaturity and inadequacy has worked at preventing him from attaining his goal”.

The European Commission’s “progress report” on Cyprus is so weak that it should really investigate the implications of this membership in a broader context.