NETHERLANDS/EU/KOSOVO/UKRAINE/CYPRUS: ADDITIONAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L THE HAGUE 002778 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/01/2014 TAGS: PREL CY TU NL EUN SUBJECT: NETHERLANDS/EU/KOSOVO/UKRAINE/CYPRUS: ADDITIONAL POINTS DELIVERED REF: A. SECSTATE 230353 ¶B. THE HAGUE 2777 Classified By: Political Counselor Andrew Schofer for reasons 1.4 (b) a nd (d). ¶1. (SBU) Poloff delivered ref a points on Kosovo, Ukraine, and Northern Cyprus to MFA Deputy Director Joep Wijnands (Political Affairs, European Correspondent) October 28 (ref B covered the remaining GAERC points). On October 29, Poloff repeated points on Northern Cyprus to Hannie Pollman-Zaal (MFA Director of Western and Central Europe). Wijnands thanked us for the information but did not make any substantive comment, noting that he did not expect much GAERC discussion on these topics. ¶2. (C) On Northern Cyprus, Pollman-Zaal expressed frustration that the draft text dealing with the aid/trade compromise was still very general with "plenty of gaps" with regard to particularities. Getting consensus will be difficult, she said, "because the Cypriots are being very hard." While she expected the November 22 GAERC to approve the aid package, the strategy depends on deciding the outlines of an agreement on the trade part. She believed the process of settling the details of the trade package would probably extend into 2005 because the Dutch "do not want the trade issue to interfere with the December 17 Council decision on Turkish accession talks." She added that the Dutch are giving extraordinary consideration to the heightened sensitivity of the Government of Cyprus to both questions, and the Dutch do not want to "overburden them with two hard questions at the same time." SOBEL